“Every morning, trains leave from the station of Trivandrum in the southernmost area going through the entire Indian continent and reach the Capital of New Delhi in nearly three days. It’s not easy to find a seat, you need to book with some day in advance. I’m headed for Kollam, and from there a bus will lead me just before the Natural Reserve of Peryar in the western Ghati, among tea, spice and coffee gardens. The landscape along the valleys is breathtaking, plantations are luxuriant and I can see the first shrubs between pink trees and teak: this is where the famous coffee of this region of Kerala comes from. Nothing can prepare you for India and nothing is rash in this place. So I decide to rent a wooden house just before the Reserve. The quality of the soil is excellent in these areas. I am surprised that varieties of Arabica and Robusta are cultivated together and that some of the plants are higher than seven metres. Coffee is a drunk and appreciated product in India, growing between pepper, cardamom, vanilla and thousands of other plants it absorbs scents and flavours of.

I opt for sampling different qualities and leave again, this time towards Tamil Nadu, in order to visit the cultivation of a special mountain coffee – it is said that the aftertaste is similar to orange. I go by bike, with my guide’s Kawasaki, so I prepare just few things to carry with me. After few days, Giovanni Spadola joins me and we agree an appointment at a friend’s, Najmudin, who will show us his plantations in Karnataka, the most famous Indian coffee-cultivating region. Other two people are traveling with Najmudin: Lorenzo Gariano, an Italian Alps guide and Rogrido Sanchez, former Colombian diplomat. We leave together from Bangalore and reach Maddikeri in the area of Coorg, one of the most important ecologic areas of the country, after seven hours. The fact that coffee grows in such a protected and preserved natural environment convinces us even more of the quality of our expedition to this remote place. Life assumes a special meaning here, where everyone it worth what he his and not what he owns. We are Najmudin’s guests in his Old Kent Estate: together with his son Sadat, he restored this old English estate, which now welcomes few lucky tourists.

We try different kinds of coffee: natural, washed and semi-washed, and we make an assessment, which is nearly always more than satisfying. We are lucky we can assist the beauty of flowering coffee plants, their strong scent is so overwhelming that you sometimes feel like you wish to sleep among the thick vegetation. On the last day, an elephant family approaches our house door to eat Jack Fruit from a tree; we watch them amazed and incredulous to be able to experience such an event. We cannot but prepare our suitcases, organise our clothes, the spices and roasted coffee bean samples we are going to take to Modica, in order to give life to new coffee alchemies”.