A 58-tunnel slow train through India's Eastern Ghats

Take a four-hour slow train through the Eastern Ghats to discover how a remote hill station is changing the global coffee game.

Even in December, early mornings are rarely pleasant on much of India's Andhra Pradesh coast. The air is already muggy by 06:30 as a crowd mills restlessly on platform five at Visakhapatnam (Vizag) railway station. However, these would-be passengers are no ordinary commuters, but travellers gathered for an experience. When the Visakhapatnam Kirandul Passenger Special rolls onto the platform, the crowd's relief is palpable; the two vistadome coaches at the back of the train that they've been anxiously waiting to board are air-conditioned. 

Indians have only a nodding acquaintance with the concept of queues, so a mad scramble ensues as the train comes to a halt. Things settle down as it chugs out of the station and gradually picks up speed. The Visakhapatnam Kirandul Passenger Special also serves as a regular commuter service headed to the town of Kirandul in Chhattisgarh state, about 400km to the north-west, and takes about 14 hours to traverse the distance. But those in the vistadome coaches are interested only in the first leg, to Araku Valley. This serene hill station is about 120km away but takes four hours as the train winds its way through a whopping 58 tunnels cut through the Eastern Ghats. The two vistadome coaches – with their extra-large windows and rotatable seats – are designed to provide panoramic views of the area's mountain peaks and valleys and its gentle forested slopes that end in rushing rivers and streams, gorges and rocky promontories.

As the train whizzes past Vizag's neighbourhoods and suburbs, it provides snapshots of a city waking up: a vegetable vendor hauling their cart, a dog walker pulled by his dog, two bleary-eyed uniformed children clutching onto their father on a scooter to school. As the city segues into wide open fields and farmlands, the images change: smoke curls lazily into the sky from a lone thatched house in the middle of a farm, a diligent farmer urges on his oxen, a tractor hauls vegetables to the nearby market. The rhythmic clickety-clack of the train's wheels is familiar and soporific.  

Less than 30 minutes after leaving Vizag, the train slows considerably and begins ascending into the foothills of the Eastern Ghats. As if on cue, most seats in the coach swing to face the windows. The train climbs, plains fall away and even the sporadic habitations clinging to the peaks vanish. Hills and mountains in the distance appear blue-grey in the tender morning sun. But even before this panorama can register, complete darkness descends as the train enters the route's first tunnel. I'm startled by the sounds of adults and children screaming, in jest of course, for the few minutes it takes for us to come out the other side.

When we emerge into daylight, the sight is jaw-dropping: a series of hillocks and gentle valleys, thickly forested, stretch out to the horizon where a haze-shrouded mountain range is just a hint of the soaring peaks to come. As I try to take in as much of the scene as possible, darkness descends again, and with it, more screaming.

On the other side is another surreal and dramatic sight: tracks bent around a hill, a green wall sloping straight up on one side, and a sheer drop on the other. The train slowly chugs forward, hugging the inner curve. The vistadomes' rear position means that the entire length of the train is visible, curling against the hill as if teetering on the edge. It then uncoils and wraps itself on the other side, trundling on a bridge built over a stream that gently flows several metres below. The bridge has no continuous guardrails, so, for a moment, it feels like the train is suspended in the air. But soon, the feeling is interrupted by darkness and more screaming, and another breathtaking view on the other side.

This sequence repeats over and over again and yet it never gets predictable or boring. Each of the route's 58 tunnels sets up anticipation for what might lay on the other side. Thick curtains of mist clinging to mountainsides or low-hanging clouds cloaking the peaks; rolling grasslands and forests spread out like someone had shaken out a giant green blanket and laid it down; deep valleys and gorges surrounded by undulating peaks; and fleeting glimpses of hamlets and habitations perched precariously on the hillsides. 

We stop every few minutes to drop and pick up commuters at musical-sounding stations that could be tongue-twisters to those unfamiliar: Pendurthi, Kottavalasa, Chimidipalli, Borraguhallu, Karakavalasa. At Shimiliguda, the station proudly wears its altitude on its sleeve: 996m above sea level. Throughout the journey, there is also a continuous parade of food vendors, delectable aromas wafting from their baskets as they sell idli-vada-chutney (a common breakfast of steamed rice cake with coconut chutney), samosa, savoury puffed rice and boiled peanuts.

When the train finally rolls into Araku town, the station is crowded and noisy and the magic of the journey dissipates somewhat. But early next morning, Araku's appeal is on full display. A short walk leads to forests and coffee plantations speckled with tall silver oak trees, their trunks wrapped by pepper vines. Everything is covered in thick fog and the air is nippy, a far cry from Vizag's mugginess. The air is sappy and thick with terpenes. I catch faint whiffs of coffee and pepper.

Coffee came to Araku with the British and was grown in scattered patches of plantations. Like other coffee-growing regions in India, Araku was an ideal location owing to its combination of soil, altitude and weather. After independence from British rule in 1857, the land passed into local government hands, but decades of underdevelopment and sporadic insurgency kept the region off most investment maps. That began to change in the early 2000s. 

"The local community wanted progress," says Manoj Kumar, CEO of the Naandi Foundation, a non-profit that works with farmers through community initiatives and sustainable models. "So we looked around and thought since coffee was already growing in pockets, it could be expanded."

Working with local farmers, the organisation began establishing micro-plots of Arabica coffee using regenerative agriculture. What began at around 1,000 acres in 2002 currently stands at 100,000 acres farmed by more than 90,000 families, who each own about an acre on average. Besides coffee, farmers have been encouraged to multi-crop and now produce pepper, red kidney beans, ginger, turmeric, millets, rice, vegetables, fruits such as chikoo (sapodilla), mango, custard apple and avocado. The result: a unique fair-trade coffee model known as Arakunomics, which won the Rockefeller Foundation's Food System Vision 2050 Prize in 2020.

But the foundation didn't stop there. In a first for Indian coffee, they "terroir-mapped" the beans – borrowing a concept from winemaking – and classified the end product into six distinct flavour profiles under the brand name ARAKU. Selective harvesting, sustainable practices and meticulous post-harvest processes have helped the beans consistently score 91/100 on specialty coffee rankings.

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"We grow about 2,000 metric tons of coffee, 98% of which is sourced by specialty coffee promoters across the world," Kumar says.

Travellers can explore this story at various coffee holdings in the area, but Priya Rajagopal, a coffee enthusiast and former project manager in tech, recommends the Sunkarametta Coffee Plantation, about 13km south-east of Araku, where a wooden bridge runs for a few hundred metres through the plantation, suspended above the coffee plants and flanked by towering silver oaks. "When I went, it was the flowering season (March to May) and the plants were full of white flowers, " she says. "The air is filled with a sweet, jasmine-like smell."

A short distance away, the modest but informative Araku Coffee Museum offers a primer on the journey from seed to cup. The small adjacent café serves a robust filter brew – earthy, rich and perfect for a chilly morning in the hills. 

A few days after the train trip, back in Bengaluru, I head to the sole ARAKU cafe in India (most of their production is either exported, retailed in stores or available online), which is tucked away in the tree-lined avenues of the city's Indiranagar neighbourhood. I am torn between the various options but opt for their signature medium roast. It is beautifully rich red-brown and utterly mellow on the tongue. More importantly, a subtle peppery end note immediately transports me back to Araku’s mist-covered winding lanes, the lush green forests and plantations – and the slow, soulful train ride that led me there.

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