Kolli Hills Pepper & Jackfruit Farm Walk

Up the seventy bends

Kolli Hills rise abruptly from the plains of Namakkal district, and the road from Karavalli climbs them in seventy numbered hairpin bends. At the top is a quiet plateau of small villages, paddy terraces and mixed farms, praised in Sangam poetry as the land of the generous chieftain Valvil Ori. You meet your host near Semmedu, the main village.

On the farm

The walk follows field paths through a family farm of a few acres. Black pepper vines are trained up silver oak trees; jackfruit, banana, coffee and pineapple grow in their shade; and small fields of millets such as thinai and saamai are still sown here. Your host explains how the family harvests and sun-dries pepper, which crops pay and which are grown for the kitchen, and how the hill weather has changed. In season (roughly April to July) you can taste jackfruit straight from the tree.

Lunch and the view

The walk ends with a home-cooked lunch of millet rice, a pepper rasam, greens from the farm and seasonal fruit. Afterwards the host points you to the viewpoints and the Arapaleeswarar temple. The Agaya Gangai waterfall below the temple is reached by a long flight of steps managed by the Forest Department; you can visit it on your own after lunch.