Alcha Cafe & Bookstore

A lot of customers had written in the Alcha store visitors’ book that it would be a great idea to have a cafe adjoining the store - while those who want to shop do so, the others who came along with them could have a coffee and maybe some snacks too. The cafe was set up in April 2005.

Open for breakfast between 7.30 a.m. till 10.30 a.m., and between 4.00 p.m. and 8.00 p.m. in the evening.

From eggs to order and toast to a small variety of paranthas , upma, homus and pancakes etc., are all on the menu.

Beverages include strong brewed coffee, cold coffee and tea (hot or iced).

The menu has items that are pretty simple to make and need no elaborate preparation time or sequence. Therefore the food is always fresh and cooked only on order.

A customer taught us to make rum & raisin chocolates. So in 2006 we started making them here and found that people were taking to them wholeheartedly.

Not being entirely happy with the bread that we were getting locally, we started experimenting with baking bread. It turned out quite well and now the cafe bakes its own bread and some of our customers are quite partial to the brown bread. Experimenting is on to bake bread regularly in a solar cooker!

Lending library & bookstore

In a university town we thought that there would be at least a few who would want to read a book while sipping their coffee. Moreover tourists who had forgotten to grab a book before they left could always find one they could read here. So all the books that we had accumulated over the years found their way to the cafe and we set up a lending library, and added a bookstore as well catering to the needs of mainly tourists to Santiniketan. A lot of friends donated from their collections as well leading now to a bit of a space crunch! The library rules are simple- deposit Rs. 200 for the duration of your read, pay a reading charge of Rs. 5/- regardless of whether you read it in a day or in a week or in a month.