Baba Budan Giri
A range of hills in Karnataka associated with the tradition that coffee first reached India as seven beans carried from Mocha.
Baba Budan Giri, also written Baba Budangiri or Bababudangiris, is a hill range in the Chikmagalur district of Karnataka. It takes its name from Baba Budan, a Sufi saint whose shrine stands on the hills. Coffee is grown on these slopes today, and “Bababudangiris Arabica” is among the Indian coffees reported in March 2019 to have been granted Geographical Indication tags.
Tradition holds that Baba Budan, returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, brought seven raw coffee beans from the port of Mocha, in Yemen, and planted them on these hills. The story is often told with the detail that green coffee was then guarded against export, so that the beans had to be carried out secretly, and that the number seven was chosen for its religious significance. A popular version has him hiding the beans in his beard. That detail is lore, not record.
Accounts differ on when this is supposed to have happened. The sources consulted place it in the sixteenth century, around 1600, in the seventeenth century, or in 1670. They present the story as tradition, and none offers documentary evidence for it. The historical record is less certain than the legend.
What is better established is later: commercial coffee planting in southern India under British rule in the nineteenth century, though sources differ on exactly when it began.
- Place
- Baba Budan Giri (Bababudangiris), Chikmagalur district, Karnataka
- Associated with
- The tradition of seven beans carried from Mocha, Yemen
- Status of the story
- Tradition; dates and details differ between accounts
- Related designation
- Bababudangiris Arabica, reported as GI-tagged in 2019
Editor’s Selection is an editorial choice by Sunjae Sharmah. Names and marks belong to their owners; no affiliation with, or endorsement by, the brand is implied.
Added October 2026