The story is almost too neat to be true, and it is largely true. In the 1600s a Sufi saint named Baba Budan, returning from the Haj, passed through the port of Mocha in Yemen. Coffee was Yemen's monopoly and exporting fertile beans was forbidden. He is said to have strapped seven to his body and carried them out.
He planted them on the ridge above what is now Chikmagalur. The ridge is named after him.
What "shade-grown" actually means
Walk into an estate here and the first thing you notice is that you cannot see the sky. Arabica in the Western Ghats is grown under a canopy — silver oak, mostly, plus jackfruit and the odd rosewood. The canopy keeps the temperature down and the pepper vines climb the same trees.
This is not how most of the world grows coffee. Sun-grown plantations yield more, faster. Shade-grown is slower, and the cup is better, and the biodiversity that survives in it is the reason these estates still have hornbills in them.
Doing the trail
Start at the Baba Budangiri shrine — shared by Hindus and Muslims, which in the current climate is worth noticing. Then drop into any working estate. Most owners will walk you through if you ask; ask in the morning, when the mist is still down.
Finish at a curing works — Aldur has one. It is loud, dusty, entirely unglamorous, and it is where the crop actually becomes a commodity.
