You still hear about the legend of Baba Budan in Karnataka’s coffee country...
Budan – a wandering Sufi 16th century cleric – risked his life and smuggled seven coffee beans out of the port of Mocha (now you know where Mocha comes from!) in Yemen. The pleasures of coffee were too much to resist even for this holy man – he planted these beans at his mountain abode at Chandradrona Parvatha near Chikmagalur.
This area is now called Bababudanagari.
Baba Budan’s efforts were clearly not in vain. Karnataka is now India’s coffee growing hub and the state’s three coffee hotspots – Kodagu (Coorg), Chikmagalur and Sakleshpur don’t just produce some of the world’s most sought after coffee beans, they also double up as great weekend getaways (with picture postcard views) from Bengaluru.
Sakleshpur has always been content to be in the shadow of Coorg and Chikmagalur – there are fewer resorts here.
It’s a good thing though – at least that’s what I felt after a weekend in one of Sakleshpur’s getaways, nestled in a coffee plantation.
A ‘Coffee Walk’ Through the Estates
I couldn't have picked a better time for a ‘coffee holiday’. December to early March is harvest season, the time when coffee berries turn from crimson to a dark cherry red.
Harley Estate was one of the many coffee plantations set up by the British during the 19th Century when coffee cultivation truly took off in India. Golden Wood is one of Saklehpur’s newer accommodation options – and is part of Harley Estate. I joined the estate’s in-house coffee expert on a coffee discovery tour that begins among the coffee bushes in picking season.
Many people visit Sakleshpur to unwind – but my host tells me that it is the love for coffee that is bringing a growing number of visitors to Golden Wood.
As I walk through the estate, I am told how I have chosen a most opportune time to be here. Picking season (between January and March) is a great time for such a tour – you can watch as the coffee beans go through a laborious process to become fit for roasting.
And what’s the point of watching all this if you can’t sip an invigorating cup of coffee? The coffee discovery tour at Golden Wood finishes at a cosy coffee lab where a coffee connoisseur walks you through different coffee brewing methods. I tried the same coffee brewed three different ways with remarkably different results!
This didn’t, however, mark the end of my 90-minute plantation tour – it’s much more than that.
I soon realised that I wasn’t the only visitor to Golden Wood who stayed on to watch a typical day unfold at the coffee estate. From the morning roll call where picking staff are assigned to different patches of the estate – to the time when the jeeps return with sacks of coffee berries that are picked through the day, it is an unusually refreshing sight.
It’s one thing to wake up and smell the coffee but another experience to wake up to the chirping of the birds in a coffee plantation. You don’t need to be a coffee aficionado to visit Sakleshpur, but it sure helps!
Getting there: Sakleshpur is a four-hour drive from Bengaluru and Mangaluru airport.
Accommodation: Golden Wood (www.goldenwood.in) has a choice of cottages spread across the estate including a century-old farmer’s hut. The resort also serves the region’s traditional Malenad cuisine. There’s also Eka resort close to Sakleshpur town (www.ekaresorts.com) that has a range of cottages.
(Ashwin Rajagopalan enjoys communicating across boundaries in his three distinct roles as a widely published lifestyle writer, one of India’s only cross cultural trainers and a consultant for a global brand services firm. Ashwin writes extensively on travel, food, technology and trends)
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