I had heard about this from Dr. Pushpa Murthy a while ago (when I was flying to Grand Canyon in August 2005) but had never taken enough interest to go and see it myself. After sleeping over the matter for nearly 6 months, I went to Twin Lakes today, for a casual photography ride and just when I was getting out of gas station, I accidentally noticed the board Twin Lakes Java. Remembering Dr. Murthy’s words, I went in and next one hour or so flew past like a few minutes, talking to Mike (the person who owns the shop) and Mr. J (probably a resident of Twin Lakes) about, as usual, variety of topics. Mike gets coffee seeds from many different parts of the world and guess what, the only coffee he has from India is from Mysore! For the last few hours, I have tried to come up with theories to explain this strange thing: of all places on earth and of all the so called big cities in US, here we are in Houghton (or Twin Lakes, just 26 miles away) - a place that has no desi hotel in the surrounding 250 miles area, with 90% of the population hasn’t even heard of and we get coffee seeds from Mysore roasted and powdered to taste right in front of our own eyes!!

Sack that carried Mysore Coffee across the globe!

Usually I have this Big City vs Small Village confrontation with few friends and I have tried everything in my arsenal to convince them that Houghton is Heaven. Thanks to availability of Mysore Coffee, I guess I have all the bragging rights to myself and rightfully so - atleast until they can show me a shop which does what Twin Lakes Java does. For those of you who don’t know where Mysore is - it’s a quiet little town popularly known as Pensioners’ Paradise, located about 90 miles south-westish of my ex-hometown, Bangalore (in India). As Dave (Bezotte) mentioned later in the evening, coffee (i.e. from Mysore) could have been a prime reason for me to visit India - now, even that’s just 30 minutes away. Yo my dear friends, how many more reasons / invitations do you need to visit me ??