Smell some coffee, and feel the bygone times

Suparna-Saraswati Puri

Like most old Indian locations, the town of Chikmagalur also enjoys a reasonable measure of historical importance. Cikkamagala and uru can be literally translated into English as ‘younger daughter’s town’. The name has mythological tracings in the Kannada folklore. It is said that the legendary chief of Sakkarepattana or Sakharayapattana gifted the town in dowry to his youngest daughter Rukmangada.

In the Malenadu region of Karnataka, located at the foothills of the Mullayanagiri range in the Western Ghats, Chikmagalur is primarily known for its pleasant climate and is popularly hailed as the ‘land of coffee’. The city offers an array of unexpected small pleasures to travellers looking for some adventure.

With a demographic base of less than 15,000 residents, Chikmagalur is a haven for a first-time visitor wanting to explore the environs. In your must-see or to-do list, you can include visits to Hebbe, Manikyadhara and Kallathigiri waterfalls, Hoysala temples at Somanathapura, Halebidu and Belur, Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary, treks and trails of Kudremukh, Mullayanagiri and Baba Budan Giri ranges. Also, a must-do is a leisurely walk through the bazaars of Mahatma Gandhi Road and Indira Gandhi Road that can prove to be an insightful experience. Incidentally, Indira Gandhi chose Chikmagalur as her constituency after losing Rae Bareli in the 1977 Lok Sabha Elections.

The crammed up retail outlets and high-rise shopping arcades located on these roads are interjected with colonial structures that can’t be missed. For that matter, check out the crumbling edifice of a pre-Independence jail compound or remnants of an early 20th century British bungalow. Inside the bungalow, you will enjoy the sight of an odd item of antiquity like an exquisite Victorian-style brass-door knocker, adorning the entrance of an innocuous repair shop. For a student, the chaos of the market place suddenly seems to get replaced by a landscape immersed in historicity with a sillage of the British Raj.

A casual conversation with an old shopkeeper reveals that the entire colonnade happened to be the urban dwelling’s most affluent locality in the mid-1920s. Curiously, coffee reached Chikmagalur in a Sufi’s beard. Story has it that an Indian mystic named Baba Budan, while returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, ‘smuggled’ seven beans of coffee from Yemen. He was on his way to Mysore when one of the beans got dropped at Chikmagalur. Hence, its acclaimed status as the land of coffee!

For novices in the history of beverage, a visit to the state government coffee museum may be educative, while for connoisseurs, a brief halt at the famous Panduranga Coffee Works on MG Road is mandatory. The manufacturers produced the finest Arabica coffee (grown on their own plantations) from state-of-the-art German machines. Interestingly, to a new customer, the showstopper in the shop will be a 150-year-old brass coffee filter, with exquisitely carved pedestals; a family heirloom strictly not for sale.

In addition to coffee, Chikmagalur was also known for its vanilla, exported predominantly to Europe. “However, in the last 20 years, most farmers have had to stop the cultivation because of the rise in temperature. This was a hill station destination offering respite from the heat of the plains, especially, during summer. Now we too experience a regular hot season like the cities of the North,” laments G.Vijay Kumar, a spice trader who belongs to a family of vanilla cultivators.

Given the rampant urbanisation in and around the town, the 21th-century version of Chikmagalur does suffer from drastic changes and driving through its lanes, a thought frequently surfaces: When did we as a nation exemplify the sentiment: Not-being-heritage-proud? Nevertheless, in all fairness, Chikmagalur, headquarters to the popular Café Coffee Day enterprise, manages to engage travellers. It fascinates with history, nature and roasted beans, rather successfully.

Know the place

• Chikmagalur is famous for temples, national parks and coffee estates. 
• For trekkers, there are several forest ranges around to explore. 
• River Bhadra flows through one of the ranges and river rafting is a popular tourist activity. 
• If you are a nature lover, visit the city in monsoons and experience the striking scenic beauty. 
• The nearest airport is Mangalore, 152 km.
• Temperature in summer is around 35º Celsius.