Sispara

This disambiguation page includes content associated with Sispara. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended section here.

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View to the west, of Sispara bungalow and Sispara peak across the stream in Sispara pass from the Sispara ghat trail. Lithograph after Stephen Ponsonby Peacocke <1847

Sispara (Sisapara, Sisparra, Sisparah, Su:spore), a proper noun, is a combination of the Badaga language words si:su + pore; meaning: magnetite bearing rock + gorge. It may refer to:

• Sispara peak, a large hill in Kerala;
• Sispara bungalow, the shelter at the base of the peak;
• Sispara pass, the low gap between hills where the shelter is located; or
• Sispara ghat, the mountain trail that goes through the pass.

Sispara peak

Sispara peak with bungalow and trail, <1857

Sispara peak, elevation 2,206 metres (7,238 ft) at 11°12′12″N 76°25′56″E, in the northeast end of Silent Valley National Park, in Kerala state, in the core area of the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, in the Western Ghats of South India. It is near the southwest end of Mukurthi National Park in Tamil Nadu state.

The great western escarpment of the Kundah Range extends north in a magnificent amphitheatre of hills from Sispara peak to Mukurthi peak (Template:M to ft, 11°23′29″N 76°31′38″E).

In 1886, Henry Francis Blanford, geologist of the Geological Survey of India, described it well:

There is perhaps no scene in Southern India more grand and imposing than this gigantic escarpment. Rising abruptly from the low jungle covered plains of Malabar, to the lofty surface of the Koondah plateau, an elevation of nearly Template:Ft to m, a precipitous hill face covered with dense jungle, furrowed but not broken up by innumerable hill torrents which course down its surface, and glisten like silver threads amid the dark green foliage of the forest. It would seem at first sight perfectly inaccessible from the plains below, and such it is throughout the greater portion of its extent. It is only at Sispara that, with considerable engineering skill, a road has been constructed, forming a communication between the hills and the low country of Malabar, and it is from this road that the finest view of the escarpment is obtainable.

Sispara peak is the abode of the Toda tribes people ancestral spirits. It is the second highest peak in the core area of Silent Valley, Anginda peak at 2,383 metres (7,818 ft), being the highest. The forests near Sisapara are exposed to the full force of the southwest monsoon and recieve up to Template:In to cm per year of rain, but suffer from a long drought during the winter.

Sispara bungalow

Sispara Trekking Shed, 2008

Sispara bungalow is at the eastern base of Sispara peak, just north of the trail at 11°12′07″N 76°26′21″E, elevation: Template:M to ft. When the Sispara road from Ootacamund to the foot of the hills below was being made in 1832, It was the camp of the Pioneers Army Regiment who made the road. It was first named Murraypet, after Captain W. Murray who was in charge of the detachment. A travelers bungalow was built there just below a strikingly sheer cliff of rock. Later a chattram (refreshment shed) was built beside that. While the trail was still in use, this place was a well known and much frequented halting-point on what was then the main route from Calicut to Ootacamnud.

About 1840, a coloured lithograph of a painting by Captain Stephen Ponsonby Peacocke shows that there was a small tiled bungalow, with a thatched outbuilding and a large tent at this place. It also shows the small seasonal stream between the trail and the bungalow. A later lithograph of the place, which forms the frontispiece to the second edition of Baikie's Neilgherries, shows that by 1857, a tiled bungalow and a smaller shed stood there.After 1857, the bungalow at Sispara was accidentally burnt down and was never rebuilt. By 1908 it was deserted and overgrown.

A gruesome story is told of a poorly informed traveller who attempted to get to Ootacamund from the west coast by this route. One of his two servants quickly succumbed to exposure from the cold and driving rain of the monsoon. He set out up the ghat with the other, who collapsed soon afterwards. The traveller took him on his back and struggled up the trail, buoyed with the hope of assistance and food when he reached the Sispara bungalow at the top. When he did finally arrive there, the only sign of the bungalow was its crumbling ruins, and the nearest human being was at Avalanche, Template:Mi to km miles further on! He managed to reach that place, still carrying his servant, but the latter had died on the way.

Now there is a small square steel shed protected by an elephant proof trench, which trekkers may use with permission of the Wildlife Warden, Silent Valley National Park. In 2007, a new trekkers' shed was built on the old site.

Sispara pass

Sispara Ghat trail:
The Devils Gap, 1836

Sispara pass, formerly known as Koondah (Kundah) pass, is a mountain pass between Sispara peak and Anginda peak. This gap is the lowest and most accessible passage through the steep western escarpment of the Kundah range of the Nilgiri hills.

Sispara ghat

The Sispara ghat mountain road ran west-north-west Template:Mi to km from Ootacamand to Avalanche; then Template:Mi to km up the Kundahs to Bangitappal; another Template:Mi to km to Sispara in the extreme south-western Corner of the plateau; and then Template:Km to mi more down a steep descent to Walaghat (half way down the slope) and Sholakal at the bottom. From Sholakal to Arriakul on the Baypoor river was Template:Mi to km and thence Template:Mi to km by large boat to Calicut port on the Indian Ocean. Overall traveling distance between Calicut and Ootacamund by Sispara was Template:Mi to km.

The first written report of the use of this route up into the Nilgiri hills was by an expedition of the Goa Inquisition led by the Jesuit priest Jacome Ferreira, from the Syrian Christian Church of the Malabar coast at Calicut. Ferreira's formal report, written upon his return on April 1, 1603, contained some account of the Badagas and Todas. It states that he and his party returned by a better route than they arrived. The route was shown to them by the kindly Badagas, of which no account is given but which may have been the Sispara path.

The Sispara ghat, formerly known as the Koondah (Kundah) ghat, was suggested in November 1831 by Mr. Stephen Rumbold Lushington, then Governor of Madras, in order to provide a speedy route to Ootacamund from Calicut for invalids traveling by ship from Bombay.

Sispara map showing:
peak, hut, pass and ghat, 1959

It became practicable for lightly-laden carts as far as Avalanche by an improved road and was a maintained bridle-path as far as Sispara. Up to Sispara, it was much used by shooting-parties and two private shooting huts were not far south of it at Pirmand and Bison Swamp. However, the steep path below Sispara, overgrown with dense jungle, was passible only on foot.

In 1831, Major Crewe, Commandant of the Nilgiris, Lieutenant LeHardy, surveyor of the Coonoor ghat then under construction, and Captain Murray of the Pioneer Regiment, searched the western side of the plateau for a practicable route for a new road and at length heard of the Sispara path, which, though greatly overgrown, was then one of the obscure paths used by tobacco-smugglers.

Lieutenant LeHardy surveyed the best route for the trail afterwards called the Sispara ghat. Captain Murray and his Pioneers were entrusted with the construction of the road. Between January 10 and May 31, 1832, they established camps at Avalanche and Sispara and worked to clear and level the road with the aid of coolies and 'tank-diggers'.

On May 31, Capt. Murray reported that the Kundah pass, as it was then called, was open with a path down the slopes connecting with the roads on the Malabar plains. Sispara was known for some time as Murraypet. The route was so infested with elephants and tigers that the Collector of Malabar obtained sanction to purchase five large swivel mounted muskets (jingalls) and employ ten peons (foot soldiers) to shoot the beasts and protect the coolies. The track was very rough but the monsoon set in and later the Pioneers were diverted to widening the Coonoor ghat. Work was not resumed till 1836.

Bearers' godown at the Avalanche, showing palanquin on ghat trail towards Sispara, <1847

In 1836 the track was so narrow that two people could not ride abreast along it. The principal obstacle was the 'ladder hill' near the middle of the descent, which was surmounted by steep zigzags at very acute angles. The Pioneers were camped at Walaghat, half way down, in huts scattered through the jungle, the site being too steep and confined for any regular cantonment. The road was finished in 1838, with a gradient of one in nine. Bungalows for travellers were built at Sholakul, Walaghat, Sispara and Avalanche. The extraordinarily heavy rainfall at that end of the Kundahs necessitated large annual repairs in subsequent years. The trail was so steep that it was seldom used for laden cattle, and the climate was so severe and the shelter en route so insufficient that Europeans often could not get coolies to come with them to carry their baggage. The ghat thus failed to fulfill its high expectations. As early as 1841 it was declared to be 'rarely traversed except at the height of the dry season', and it was eventually abandoned. After 1857, the bungalow at Sispara was accidentally burnt down and was never rebuilt.

The following account of the ascent of Sispara Ghat by Clements Robert Markham defies editing.

Curcuma sp.

We landed at the port of Calicut, on our way to the Nilgiri Hills, on the 7th October, 1860. He who would desire to receive the most pleasant impression of India, on a first arrival, must follow in the wake of Vasco da Gama, and disembark on the coast of Malabar, the garden of the peninsula. Here Nature is clad in her brightest and most inviting robes, the scenery is magnificent, the fields and gardens speak of plenty, and the dwellings of the people are substantial and comfortable.

Late in the evening, we embarked in a canoe on the Beypur river. The banks are wooded down to the water's edge, with groves of slender betel palms rising above the other foliage, and standing out against the starry sky. We were met by Mr. Mclvor at the landing-place of Eddiwana, and started at once for the village of Wundur, whence the road leads up the Sisapara ghat to the Nilgiris.

The ascent commences at Sholakul, a post-house surrounded by stout palisades, to protect it from wild elephants. Thence the road first passes through a tract overgrown with gigantic weeds, and then up a steep slope, covered with a forest of blackwood and other fine timber trees, with an undergrowth of ferns, Curcumas, and a brilliant little purple flower, the Wishbone Flower, Torenia Asiatica(Torenia glabra). The occasional openings in the forest, at turns in the road, afforded us views of the mountains below us, covered with the richest vegetation, and of the rice-fields of Malabar, stretching away to the faintly indicated blending of sea and haze on the far horizon. As we continued the ascent the scenery increased in magnificence, the views became more extensive, and there were mountain-tops crowned with grand forest trees far below us. At 6000 feet mosses appear, then lilies, brambles, and wild strawberries, and occasionally we crossed noisy little streams overshadowed by the trees.

File:Torenia glabra - Torenia.jpg

Wishbone Flowers, Torenia Asiatica

We reached the Sisapara bungalow, on the summit of the ghat 6742 feet above the level of the sea, late in the afternoon. The Sisapara ghat takes the traveller from the tropical plains to the temperate climate of the hills, where the face of Nature is entirely changed. Here the slopes are covered with grass, and the ravines only are filled with trees, forming thickets called sholas. In the rear of the Sisapara bungalow, there is an almost unrivalled view of the Malabar plains, from the edge of a precipice. The Kundah hills sweep round until they join the Wyanad range, and appeared to be so steep that even a cat could not scale them for many miles; and far below were the forests, with occasional open glades. The distance from Sisapara to Utakamand, the chief English station on the Nilgiris, is thirty-three miles, fifteen of which are over the Kundah hills, and the rest of the distance is within the Nilgiris proper.

Flora and fauna

From Sispara peak there is a panoramic view of deep valleys packed with dense vegetation. The Sispara pass leading down into Silent Valley, is enveloped in foliage and remains hidden even from the top of the peak.

Robert Wight, a surgeon turned botanist, ventured into this area in the middle of the 19th century. In the process, Wight discovered seven new species from Sispara and the adjoining jungles and as many as 122 Indian plants have been named after him.

The Sispara Day Gecko is found here.

The endangered plants Glochidion sisparense, Ilix Gardneriana, Melicope indica, Memecylon sisparense, Pavetta hohenackeri, Peliosanthes neilgherrensis, Pogostemon paludosus, Pygeum sisparense, Symplocos Pulchra and Youngia nilgiriensis are endemic to the Sispara area.

External sources

• Baber, Thomas Hervey, (1830) Journal of a route to the Neelghurries from Calicut, Asiatic Journal (New Series), III, 310-316.