Thekkady (Periyar)

Vagamon

Vagamon is tea gardens, meadow and pine forest on the Kottayam–Idukki border, about 1,100 m up. Its roads wind in hairpin bends, often between old pines, and they are even better walked than driven. The hills worth the trip are well out of town, though: Thangal Para about 5 km, Kurisumala about 8 km. Plan on a vehicle to link them in one day. There are three of those hills, strung together in a chain, and each is holy to a different faith. Kurisumala, the Mountain of the Cross, has a church on its summit and a monastery founded in 1958 by a Belgian Trappist monk. The Sufi saint Sheikh Fariduddin rests in a dargah at Thangal Para, down the Elappara road, and the Hindu hill, Murugan Para, lies east of Kurisumala with a temple cut into its rock. The newer draw is at Kolahalamedu, Vagamon's highest point: a cantilever glass bridge opened in 2023 and billed as India's longest, over a valley its builders put at about 150 ft deep. It is the one thing here that could be anywhere. You queue, then get five or six minutes on the glass. Give the hills your morning and the bridge whatever is left.