0 Ganesh's Coffee Estate at Shuntikoppa

This is my cousin's house and coffee beans processing area midst his coffee estate inside a valley formed by three hills. The place is absolutely great. Just green, green and green. I still remember how my Omni struggled to go up the steep dirt track... I could smell the clutch plates burning. Finally I tool it up in reverse.


That's my cousin Ganesh, my dad's cousin Mahendra's son. He's standing below a mango tree, the tallest one I've seen in my life.


During my visit, it was rainy season and they were spraying the plantation. A tough, labor intensive job. Unlike other plants, the the underside of the coffee leaves are sprayed.

There were hundreds of jack-fruit trees loaded with hundreds of jack-fruits. Some rotting away in the tree itself. Ganesh told us that workers here just slash through ripe ones and pick few pieces and eat them when hungry. Nobody ever bothers taking them home.

Just behind the house, next to a fresh water stream, was a large cluster of banana plants, the jungle variety a source of continuous supply of banana through out the year. Apart from this the estate provides them with almost everything they need... firewood, water, fruits, spices. It would be fun to spend few weeks down there.

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