Baba Budangiri Hills
A syncretic pilgrimage hill revered as both Dattatreya Peetha and the dargah of Sufi saint Hazrat Baba Budan, who is also credited with bringing coffee cultivation to India.
Baba Budangiri is one of Karnataka’s most striking examples of shared religious devotion: the hill cave shrine is venerated by Hindus as the Dattatreya Peetha, associated with the triple deity Dattatreya, and simultaneously as the dargah of the Sufi saint Hazrat Baba Budan, after whom the range is named. Pilgrims of both faiths visit the site, and festivals here have historically drawn joint participation, making it a notable, if at times contested, site of interfaith devotion in the Western Ghats.
Baba Budan is also central to a widely told origin story of Indian coffee cultivation: legend credits him with smuggling seven coffee beans out of Yemen on a pilgrimage to Mecca in the seventeenth century and planting them on this very hillside, seeding the coffee estates that now blanket Chikkamagaluru district and much of the surrounding Western Ghats.
Getting there: The hill shrine is reached via a hill road from Chikmagalur town, served by the Baba Budangiri Post Office.
The site itself
Where to get your stamp cancelled
This may not be next to the site itself — some post offices serve several nearby landmarks.
- Post office
- Baba Budangiri Post Office
- Address
- Baba Budangiri Post Office, Baba Budangiri, Chikkamagaluru District, Karnataka
Sources
- Project maintainer transcription of the physical Philately Passport booklet (district/landmark/post office list)