This is a travelog typed on an Olivetti, glued into a notebook, and scanned only because someone insisted. It is not a guidebook. It is a collection of analog memories gathered across India — where mountains remember older names, temples carry centuries of whispered prayers, the sea tells the same stories to every generation, forests keep their own silence, and forgotten cafés still serve conversations as faithfully as coffee.
Some journeys ahead begin with the aroma of an Indian Coffee House — the country's oldest still-running restaurant chain, founded in 1957 by sacked coffee-board workers who decided, quite calmly, to start their own cooperative. Others follow old railway lines, winding hill roads, crumbling forts, sleepy villages, rain-soaked coastlines, or streets where time seems to have politely slowed down. This is for those who still believe that travel is less about checking destinations off a list and more about collecting moments that cannot be downloaded — places with history, people with stories, and landscapes that leave behind a feeling long after the journey ends. Welcome to the trails where nostalgia is the destination, nature is the companion, and every mile is delightfully, unapologetically analog.
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Transport · urban sketches
Indian Coffee House, Calcutta
Born and brought up in the warm PSU colony culture of BALCO, Korba. Raised amidst red oxide floors, colony cricket grounds, cycle rides at dusk, Doordarshan evenings, Kendriya Vidyalaya uniforms, annual functions, workshop sirens, and the unmistakable smell of monsoon on factory roads.
One became an Electrical Engineer.
The other, a Mechanical Engineer.
But beyond careers, deadlines, and adulthood, they carried something far more valuable — memories of a slower India.
An India of:
Each trail below is a loop or a line drawn across a slower India — two of them strung between branches of the Indian Coffee House, the rest following hill roads, temple towns, tide lines, and forest tracks. There are no detours to "must-see" attractions, no sponsored stays, no curated experiences. There is only the next stop, the next story, the next slow afternoon.
From Gujarat into Maharashtra, through Madhya Pradesh, deep into Chhattisgarh's steel and coal country, and home again. Six coffee houses, most of them run by the Jabalpur cooperative society. The route is shaped roughly like a teardrop, which is appropriate.
Three coffee houses in the state where the southern cooperative society was born — including the Laurie Baker red-brick spiral in Trivandrum, the busy mainland-Kochi flagship at Ernakulam, and the hometown branch in Thrissur, registered office of Society No. 4227.
Where the Satpuras whisper and rivers are born. From the sacred Maikal Hills of Amarkantak to the mist-covered plateaus of Pachmarhi, following the mountain systems that shaped Madhya Pradesh's rivers, forests, tribes, and history.
Gopurams at dawn, oil lamps, stone corridors worn smooth by footsteps older than memory. A trail through temple towns where the architecture itself seems to keep time.
Fishing harbours, lighthouse towns, and the particular hush of a coastline in the monsoon. Boats, salt air, and conversations that drift the way tides do.
Forest rest houses, watchtowers, and roads where the canopy closes overhead. A quieter trail, still being walked before it is fully written.
The room is a small monument. Generations of Nagpur grew up here, the junction outside is named after it, and the white-uniformed waiters know the regulars by what they order. Marble-topped tables, slow ceiling fans, bridge games at the back. Light enters at an exact 1970s angle. The cutlet is sharper than you remember.
The mothership. Jabalpur is home to the Indian Coffee Workers' Co-operative Society Ltd., founded in 1958 with a starting capital of Rs. 1,365 and sixteen members. The Malviya Marg branch is the oldest in town — high ceilings, faded green walls, a menu card that politely apologises for price revisions. This trail's true centre of gravity.
Smaller, busier, more workmanlike than its older cousins. Office-workers in the morning, students by afternoon, families on Sunday. The Bilaspur cutlet has a particular variety — beetroot-pink in the middle, served with a green chutney and an inexplicable single fried curry leaf perched on top like a hat.
The most industrial coffee stop on the trail. Korba runs on power plants and the coffee house sits inside that orbit — engineers in blue half-sleeves, contractors with rolled-up site plans, coffee delivered to the table in a thermos. The Jabalpur society also runs a Hotel India lodge upstairs, so you can sleep above your dosa.
The Raipur main branch is one of the busiest in central India. A long hall with two rows of bolted-down tables, ceiling fans on the second-highest setting, and waiters who can carry seven coffees in a single tray without spilling a drop. There is a newer New Raipur outlet too (cleaner, calmer) but the G.E. Road one is the real one. Order anything that involves egg.
The steel-city closer. Bhilai is where the last filter coffee of the trail is drunk before the car points west toward Gujarat. The Supela branch shares premises with Hotel India and pulls the same mixed crowd: SAIL retirees, weekend families, somebody always reading a Hindi newspaper folded into precise fourths.
The most famous coffee house in India. Designed by the architect Laurie Baker as a continuous red-brick spiral — you eat your dosa walking gently uphill, then walk gently down again. No two tables are at the same height. Locals do not think about this; tourists keep tilting their heads. Cheap, fast, perfect.
The mainland-Kochi flagship. A long shaded hall a few minutes from the Ernakulam boat jetty — exactly the kind of place a traveller slips into between catching a ferry to Fort Kochi and a train at Ernakulam Junction. Strong south Indian breakfast game, and one of the better non-veg menus in the chain. Look for the Kerala-style chicken curry at lunch.
The hometown branch. Thrissur is where the Indian Coffee Board Workers' Co-operative Society Ltd. No. 4227 was registered in 1958 — this city is the registered office of the entire Kerala chain. Sit at a window on the Round, watch the buses do their slow lap around the maidan, and order what the founders would have ordered.
There are mountains that invite conquest, and there are mountains that invite contemplation. This trail is not about reaching summits — it is about landscapes where forests breathe, rivers begin, temples emerge from stone, and time moves with the rhythm of nature. From the sacred Maikal Hills of Amarkantak to the mist-covered plateaus of Pachmarhi, it follows the ancient mountain systems — Satpura, Vindhya, Maikal — that have nurtured civilisations, inspired saints, sheltered wildlife, and quietly witnessed centuries of history.
Although celebrated for their prehistoric rock shelters, Bhimbetka is equally a mountain landscape where humanity's earliest artists found inspiration.
Stand before a painting created thousands of years ago and reflect on how little the mountains themselves have changed.
More than a summer retreat, Pachmarhi is a harmonious blend of colonial heritage, mythology, sandstone caves, waterfalls, and dense forest — capped by Dhoopgarh, the highest peak in the state.
Watch the sunset from Dhoopgarh without reaching for your phone. The changing colours of the Satpura hills are a reminder that some spectacles are meant to be experienced, not captured.
Tamia overlooks deep valleys and endless forest, largely unvisited — a plateau reached by roads that seem to have been carved for exactly this purpose and no other.
Spend an evening on the veranda of the old rest house, watching fog drift through the valley while the world below slowly disappears into darkness.
A horseshoe-shaped valley inhabited by the Bharia tribe, where traditional knowledge and mountain life continue with remarkable resilience, largely on their own terms.
Walk quietly through the valley and let local stories reveal a world that has remained hidden from hurried travellers.
The Satpuras are among India's oldest mountain ranges, sheltering forests that remain remarkably untouched — and among the very few Indian parks where a walking safari is actually permitted.
Listen to the forest at sunrise. Before engines, notifications, and traffic, this was the soundtrack of India.
Nestled where the Vindhya and Satpura ranges meet, Amarkantak is one of India's most sacred mountain landscapes. It is here the mighty Narmada begins its westward journey, while the Son and Johila rivers flow east from the very same hill.
Wake before dawn and walk to the Narmada Udgam. As temple bells echo through the mist and the first light touches the hills, you'll understand why some journeys begin with silence.
What's clear so far: a gopuram at first light, the smell of camphor and crushed jasmine, and a corridor of pillars worn smooth by generations of bare feet. The names, dates, and directions are being checked before they're added — this cooperative doesn't publish anything it hasn't verified in person.
A lighthouse, a fishing harbour smelling of salt and diesel, and a monsoon that arrived while the notes were being taken — which explains the smudged ink on this page. The boats, the names of the villages, and the receipts are being sorted out before they go up here.
A forest rest house, a watchtower, and a canopy that closed overhead somewhere past the second checkpoint. The silence here was the whole point, so the notes are shorter than usual — and slower to transcribe for exactly that reason.
This is a travel notebook for a slightly slower, slightly more deliberate way of moving through India. We carry a paper map, write in ballpoint, and chase the kind of places that still keep a brass bell on the counter. The text you are reading was first typed on an Olivetti Lettera 32 between train stations.
Each trail in this volume is built around a different kind of memory — mountains that remember older names, temple towns that carry centuries of whispered prayers, coastlines the sea keeps telling the same stories to, and forests that keep their own silence. Two of the trails, so far, are built around a subject with a memory of its own: the Indian Coffee House — the largest worker-owned restaurant chain in the world, founded in 1957 when the Coffee Board sacked its staff and the staff, quite calmly, replied by starting their own cooperative society. The first new-generation branch opened in Delhi on 27 December 1957. By the end of 1958 the chain reached Nagpur, Jabalpur, Pondicherry, Thrissur, Lucknow, Mumbai, Kolkata, Tellicherry, and Pune.
Two regional cooperatives carry those particular trails: the Indian Coffee Workers' Co-operative Society Ltd., Jabalpur, which runs the central Indian outlets in Trail 01, and the Indian Coffee Board Workers' Co-operative Society Ltd. No. 4227, Thrissur, which runs the Kerala outlets in Trail 02. The remaining trails — mountains, temples, sea, forests — are still being transcribed from a second notebook, and will be added a page at a time.
Every stop on these trails was visited in person, paid for in cash, and recorded the same evening. None of it is sponsored. None of it is reviewed. It is simply visited, in order, like saints on a pilgrimage.