AM NOT A FAN OF SOLO TRAVEL. But having heard of the vistas that solo travelling opens—a sense of solitude mixed with adventure and the excitement of meeting new people—I decided to try it out. My head filled with visions of Celine from and Elizabeth Gilbert from I began to explore a few options for my first solo trip. I didn’t have to wait long as one fine day, an opportunity to travel to the remote Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh came up. The invitation enticingly titled The Araku Discovery Trail implored me to trace the success story of a coffee plantation that created source of livelihoods for the tribal communities of the region and put homegrown coffee on the world map.
