When you think of coffee, you think of cafes churning out frothy shakes and hot cups of cappuccino; you don't think of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan’s old capital and definitely not a Sufi saint who first brought coffee beans to India more than 400 years ago.

As you may have now guessed, India’s coffee connection is the story of ancient trade routes, Sufi saints and our penchant for lounging around and chatting. But the tale of coffee itself begins in Ethiopia, where legend has it that a shepherd in the highlands of Ethiopia noticed that some of his sheep were more alert and active than the rest. He began to observe his flock more closely and found that his ‘hopped-up’ sheep were munching on berries from a certain plant, which was changing their behaviour. Apparently, this is how coffee was discovered by man. It was fine-tuned over time – the seed began to be roasted to perfection – to give us the fine brews we savour today.

While there is no corroboration for the tale of the shepherd in Ethiopia, the earliest reference to people drinking coffee as a beverage comes from Yemen in the Arabian Peninsula, in the 14th or 15th CE. In fact, by now, references to coffee seem to have been popping up across.