Explore Coorg

Coorg, known to the Kodavas who have lived here for centuries as Kodagu, is Karnataka's highest-altitude district-a landscape of rolling coffee and cardamom estates, fast-moving rivers, and forested hills that rise to 1,750 metres at Tadiandamol Peak. It is not a hill station in the conventional sense. There is no mall road, no toy train, no single landmark that anchors the visit. What defines a Coorg trip is immersion-and immersion here means the estate. The coffee that grows in Coorg produces some of India's finest single-origin beans. The estates that grow it-some covering 50 to 300 acres, some owned by the same Kodava families for three or four generations-are the destination. Taj Madikeri Resort & Spa, Evolve Back Coorg, and Ama Stays Rare Earth Estate are not properties near the experience. They are the experience: working estates where the plantation walk, the spice garden, and the harvest-season fragrance of coffee blossom are available from your room balcony. Nagarhole National Park, on Coorg's northern boundary, holds the second-highest tiger density in India after Ranthambore. Alike's naturalist-guided wildlife drive enters Zone 3 at dawn-the hour when the buffer forest road is free of traffic, and the light is right. Elephant herds are sighted regularly in January to April; leopards, gaurs, and dholes (Indian wild dogs) are present year-round. Abbey Falls, Raja's Seat, the Cauvery Nisargadhama river island, and the golden-roofed Namdroling Monastery at Bylakuppe (the largest Tibetan settlement outside Tibet) are the standard itinerary points. Alike's packages build in a curated Bylakuppe visit-the monastery complex at sunrise, before tour groups arrive, with a Tibetan lunch at one of the settlement's community kitchens. The Coorg family that runs the estate where you are staying is, in many cases, the same family that founded it. In Coorg, the personal history of the estate is part of what you are buying when you buy a Beyond Ordinary package. Alike's consultant matches the property to the traveller-not by star rating alone, but by what kind of Coorg experience the traveller wants.