my place
my place

                  MY PLACE

 

      My place is KATTAPPANA.  It is a small town located in the Idukki District of Kerala State in India.  The Kattappana is 154 kms from Ernakulam, 114 kms from Kottayam and 289 kms from Thiruvananthapuram.  It is located near the border of the Tamilnadu State and is only 32 kms from Kumily, where Kerala and Tamilnadu shares the boundary.  The Kattappana can be accessed by buses from Ernakulam, Kottayam, Thiruvananthapuram, Changanasserry and Kumily all the day and night. 

    The Kattappana is lying in the High Ranges of the Western Ghats and is 888 mts high from the sea level.  The name “KATTAPPANA” has got from the Malayalam word “KOOTTAPPANA”, which means group of palm trees.    When a group of daring farmers came here in early 1950’s as a part of migration to forest lands and cultivating, they noticed the placed the fertile land where a group of palm trees are grown and named it as Koottappana, which later came to be known as Kattappana.  The Kattappana is mainly an agriculture oriented place and a lot of spices are grown here.  Therefore the synonym “SPICE CITY”  is apt for this beautiful  town. 

    The farmers came here fought with the wild animals and natural disasters and diseases and sow gold from the soil.  The farmers came here as a part of “more cultivable lands and more food” policy of the then Pattam Thanu Pillai government.  As a result, large number of people from Kottayam and Ernakulam districts migrate to the High Ranges.  Then the Idukki was a part of Kottayam district.  Only in 1972, the Idukki district came into being with capital at Devalokam in Kottayam and Dr. Babu Paul as the first District Collector.  The district formed with High Ranges of the Kottayam district and some low lands of Ernakulam district.

    At earlier times the people here had to work much hard to earn a living.  There were no communication and transportation facilities.  Only a bus to Kottayam from Kattappana is the only source of outside connection.  Later as the rewards from the soil improved and the farmers were able to improve their lives.  The communication and transport facilities improved in a faster pace and the development of the town increased in high speed.  As the prices of the spices increased in the late 80’s, the development of Kattappana also moved upwards.  The economy of the Kattappana is always dependent on the fluctuations in the spice markets. 

    Now the Kattappana  is a developed town and is the second biggest one in the Idukki district.  The Panchayat has many schools of various choices, a Government College, several Government and non-governmental offices and institutions, a First Class Judicial Magistrate Court and a Sub Court.  The town now has  private and K.S.R.T.C bus stations which has services through out the state and to some nearby towns in Tamilnadu. There are buses linking Kattappana to Bangalore, Chennai and Coimbatore by private operators like KPN Travels

    The Kattappana is located in between two world famous tourist centres, The Idukki and The Thekkady.  In Idukki, there lies the world’s third largest and India’s biggest Arch Dam and Thekkady hosts the Periyar Wild Life Sanctuary.  Kattappana is also a small tourist place with many attracting places nearby.

    The culture scene in the town is also interesting.  The Panchayat has a Christian majority but there exists a religious harmony among all the religions. The main religious centres are The Roman Catholic Church, The Lakshmi Narayana temple, Sree Dharma Sastha temple and the Town Juma I Masjid.  The Kattappana has a good film and play interesting population. There is a film society named Darsana Film Society which has won three times the D.N.Rao award for  the Best Film Society in South India.  There is a sports and games loving population also here. There is an annual Football Tournament also here.   


    Recently Kattappana was in news among the biologists. Dr. Biju, scientist associated with The Tropical Botanical Gardens, Palode, Thiruvananthapuram has found out out a frog near here. It again proves the Plate Tecktonics Theory. Read more here..


                                                                            go up