Coorg & Chikmagalur

Why Coorg & Chikmagalur works

Coorg, officially Kodagu district, and neighbouring Chikmagalur district are hill districts in Karnataka, India, both set along the Western Ghats. Kodagu, on the eastern slopes of the Ghats, is bordered by Dakshina Kannada, Hassan, and Mysore districts along with Kerala's Kasaragod, Kannur, and Wayanad districts, and rises from just 50 metres near Makutta to 1,750 metres at Tadiandamol, its highest peak. Chikmagalur, in Karnataka's Malnad subregion and known as Kadur district until 1947, borders Shimoga, Davanagere, Chitradurga, Tumkur, Hassan, Dakshina Kannada, and Udupi, and contains Mullayanagiri, at 1,926 metres the highest point in the entire state.

Kodagu's earliest known inhabitants were the Kodavas, a community with its own warrior tradition, first mentioned in Sangam-period literature dating from roughly 300 BCE to 300 CE. The Haleri dynasty, an offshoot of the Keladi Nayakas, ruled Kodagu from 1600 until 1834, when the British took control following the Coorg War; Kodagu remained a separate Coorg State until 1956, when it was merged into what is now Karnataka. Chikmagalur has its own historical distinction: it was where the Hoysala dynasty began, according to legend at Sosevur, now identified with Angadi, where the dynasty's founder Sala is said to have killed the tiger later immortalised in the Hoysala crest, and King Veera Ballala II built the Amriteshwara temple at Amrithapura in the thirteenth century. Coorg later came under British rule from 1834 until 1947, before rejoining independent India as a separate state until its 1956 merger into Karnataka.

Coffee cultivation in India traces directly to these two districts: tradition holds that the saint Baba Budan smuggled seven coffee beans out of Yemen during a pilgrimage and planted them in the hills of Chikmagalur around 1670, giving the Baba Budan Giri range its name, while Kodagu today is India's largest coffee- and pepper-producing district, growing roughly a third of Karnataka's coffee crop and about a quarter of India's black pepper. Sringeri, in Chikmagalur district, is home to the Sringeri Sharada Peetham, the first of the four mathas established by Adi Shankaracharya, and the district's Dakshina Peeta remains a major pilgrimage site tied to that founding.

Kodagu's landmarks include Talakaveri, where the River Kaveri originates beside a temple to Brahma, one of only two such temples in India and Southeast Asia; Bhagamandala, at the confluence of the Kaveri and Kannika rivers; and Iruppu Falls, a sacred site on the Lakshmana Tirtha River in the Brahmagiri hill range. Chikmagalur's own hill stations include Kemmangundi and Kudremukh, alongside waterfalls such as Hebbe Falls and Manikyadhara Falls and temple towns including Sringeri, Horanadu, and Kalasa.

Rainfall in Chikmagalur varies sharply from west to east, from around 5,000 millimetres a year in the wetter western hills to under 1,000 millimetres on the district's semi-arid eastern plains, with daily temperatures generally between 18°C and 32°C and summer highs reaching 38–40°C. That range of elevation and rainfall supports forest types from evergreen to dry deciduous across both districts, feeding rivers including the Tunga and Bhadra, which rise in Chikmagalur's hills, and the Kaveri, which begins at Talakaveri in Kodagu and drains much of the district through its tributaries. Kigga village, in Chikmagalur's Sringeri taluk, is recorded as the wettest location in the district by the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre.

• Kodagu district — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Chikmagalur district — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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