Coffee Country

Nandini Mehta is charmed by Coorgi hospitality at the Evolve Back Chikkana Halli Estate Resort

And this is the coffee flower.” Yesudas, the resident naturalist, points to white blossoms on a bush. “What do you think it smells of?”

“Coffee,” we chorus back.

“Wrong!” grins Yesudas with the air of a conjuror who has pulled off a clever trick.

The coffee flower, we discover, has a strong jasmine-like fragrance—the first of many botany lessons at Evolve Back’s Chikkana Halli Estate Resort in Coorg.

I had arrived the evening before, greeted by a spectacular evening sky of violet, orange and pink that gradually deepened into inky-blue darkness. The lush landscape and serene ambience of the resort, sitting in 300 acres of coffee and pepper plantations, revealed itself the next morning. Sandwiched between the Kaveri river and the Dubare Reserve Forest, the estate comprises two large lakes, paddy fields, an organic vegetable farm and a forest of ancient mahogany, giant rosewood, various ficuses, teak, bamboo and some rare plant species. I’m intrigued by the mathi (Terminalia tomentosa) with its scaly crocodile-skin trunk that stores rainwater (another botany lesson). Within the resort, cobbled pathways wind through the undulating terrain, lined with flowering shrubs and trees, most of them indigenous—kokum, tamarind, jackfruit, coconut, allspice and wild fig. Placards inform us that visiting celebrities—among them Aishwarya Rai, Rajnikanth and L.K. Advani—have planted some of them.