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The busy commercial centre of KOTTAYAM is strategically located between the backwaters to the west and the spice, tea and rubber plantations, forests, and the mountains of the Western Ghats to the east, 76km southeast of Kochi and 37km northwest of Alappuzha. Most visitors come here on the way somewhere else - foreigners take short backwater trips to Alappuzha or set off to Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary , while Ayappa devotees pass through en route to the forest temple at Sabarimala. Kottayam's long history of Syrian Christian settlement is reflected by the presence of two thirteenth-century churches on a hill 5km northwest of the centre, which you can get to by rickshaw. Two eighth-century Nestorian stone crosses with Pahlavi and Syriac inscriptions, on either side of the elaborately decorated altar of the Valliapalli ("big") church, are probably the earliest solid evidence of Christianity in India. The visitors' book contains entries from as far back as the 1890s, including one by the Ethiopian king, Haile Selassie, and a British viceroy. The interior of the nearby Cheriapalli ("small") church is covered with lively, unskilled paintings, thought to have been executed by a Portuguese artist in the sixteenth century. If the doors are locked, ask for the key at the church office (9am-1pm & 2-5pm).
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