Hill homes in Araku Valley, Andhra Pradesh

Araku sits at around nine hundred metres in the Eastern Ghats, and its coffee is not the same story as Coorg's. The plantations here are largely worked by Adivasi growers from the Bagata, Valmiki and Konda Dora communities through cooperatives, on land that grew millets and rajma long before the first coffee went in. The hamlets are built accordingly: bamboo and mud walls on a low plinth, thatch pitched steeply and pulled down low over the eaves, a swept forecourt, and the granary standing as a separate structure. The painted bands of geometry around the doorways are a local habit rather than a decoration bought in.

The way in is one of the better railway journeys in the country. The Kirandul line climbs out of Visakhapatnam through more than fifty tunnels and a long series of bridges to reach the valley in about five hours, and the Borra caves, limestone and enormous, are a station on the route. By road it is the ghat climb from the coast, the same ascent with more switchbacks.