About Jammu & Kashmir
Kashmir — Jannat, as the Mughals called it — where saffron fields turn the Pampore plains a deep violet every October. Entire families rise before dawn to pluck each crimson thread by hand before the sun can fade it; it takes hundreds of flowers to fill a single gram. This is Mongra saffron — Grade A, thread by thread — gathered the same painstaking way it has been for centuries. Down in the Chenab Valley, around Bhaderwah, small red rajma climbs beside the maize on high terraces, picked by hand and dried in the autumn sun. Its GI tag, granted in 2023, marks it as a bean that belongs to this valley alone, and it cooks down to a buttery softness that no supermarket bean can match.