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Jammu and Kashmir

Purple farms of the saffron flowers - Kashmir story

By: The Lost Lander
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Long ago, I watched a visual documentary about the farmers of Kashmir who woke up early on freezing cold mornings to gather fresh flowers from their fields. They all rose with the sun to harvest saffron, the most expensive spice in the world. Ever since, these romanticized visuals had me imagining myself walking on those farms someday.

For close to a year, I had been trying to reach out to people to know when the exact time of the year was to witness these inflorescences. I got in touch with a local person from Srinagar who would take me around the farms. I learnt that the flowers would bloom around late October when autumn sets in. As the season approached, I was getting too anxious to not miss the season. Thus, booked a last-minute flight ticket from Bengaluru, for a long weekend at Srinagar. After a missed connecting flight and spending almost an entire day at the Delhi airport, I had finally arrived at Srinagar on a late Friday evening.

‘Be ready early in the morning, we will be heading towards Pampore’, my local guide said to me before dropping me off at a homestay in the city.

On the following morning, the Chinar leaves of autumn had started to paint my entire journey in gold. The sun rising over the overlooking mountains that surrounded us all around only enhanced my excitement to reach my destination. The saffron grown in the Jammu and Kashmir region has gained a GI tag in the year 2020 with Pulwama, Budgam and Kishtwar districts being key saffron producing areas.

‘Welcome to the Saffron town of India’, a board stood at the entrance of Pampore in Pulwama. The wide stretch of land on both sides of the highway looked bare and dry, without sight of a single flower or even plants of saffron that I had come to see from 2000 kilometres away. I looked at the person accompanying me, enough for him to understand the meaning of the perplexing look on my face. “Haven’t the farmers cultivated saffron this year?”, I asked him.

He walked me down to one of the farms on the roadside and explained to me that even yield ready plants aren’t prominently visible, with barely one or two grass-like looking leaves emerging from each root (bulb). Only the flowers come out from the roots that are extremely sensitive to the environmental temperature. “This stretch of the farms has no shade and the heat due to the highway traffic delays the blossom. We will go to the interior villages of Pampore which have more shade because of orchards like apples, almonds, apricots, etc. The blossom season begins in the shaded-cooler areas and ends with the open-warmer areas”, he said giving me some relief.


We then met a farmer at Pulwama town who then drove us through the interior village of Pulwama, which is otherwise untouched by tourists. Finding our way through the misty morning while being greeted by endless orchards on either side, my guide on the steering stopped at a point. “Madam, here you go!”, he said.

The purple flowers of saffron in Kashmir

I ran out of the car and watched the sight in awe. It seemed like a faint purple carpet of flowers had been laid on a hazy morning, with the apple orchards writing testimony to my presence and the snowy mountains standing guard against this beautiful view. I had a tear rolling down my cheek, which I am still unsure if was because of sheer joy or in disbelief that I had made it there. I spent hours that morning walking between the purple blossoms, caressing the tender, dewy and moist flowers of saffron, taking pictures of the flowers while enjoying the crisp autumn air. The people accompanying me for sure must have thought that I was a psychopath wandering and meandering all alone, who had travelled from so far just to see these flowers. A few flowers made it to my books, pressed carefully between the pages and getting to go home with me.

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He picked the tender flowers and rested a bunch on my hands while pulling out the saffron strands from one, for me to eat. My tongue had turned yellow upon consumption which he explained was an indication of the authenticity of the spice. I was then invited to his work area where his family had gathered around a table and were separating the different parts of the flowers that would be used for different purposes. He explained the entire process of separation of the saffron strands (the stigma or the female part of the flower), the drying and the packaging. Sipping on hot brew of Kahwa served with the same strands of the saffron that I was holding a few moments ago was overwhelming.

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Of course, my visit would have been incomplete without picking up stashes of saffron from their shop as souvenirs for friends and family. In this short visit to the land of saffron, I had witnessed the world’s richest spice travel from farm to market. Sigh, it was a dream come true, to experience these fully blown saffron fields!