India – Page 28 – Discovering Tea

A beautiful landscape doesn’t always make a good tea

31 August 2010

A beautiful landscape doesn’t always make a good tea. When I come from Bagdogra (India) and start the three-hour ascent into the Himalayan foothills, I love nothing more than stopping and admiring the view once I get through the stifling heat of Siliguri. The land is no longer completely flat, the city has disappeared from sight, the traffic and the horns have calmed down. Goats doze on the roadside. You start seeing far away above the trees and it helps bearing the heat: you suffocate much less when looking at a clear view. With the gentle breeze and the smell of the earth, I always stop walking between the tea plants.

Actually, I must say that they’re not good tea plants. People say that they are Darjeelings, but it’s not quite true: they are just outside the Darjeeling “appellation”, but close enough for dishonest merchants to use them to bulk out the real Darjeelings and cheat the buyers. This explains how there is four times as much Darjeeling tea sold worldwide than is actually produced.

Never mind, it’s the landscape that is worth admiring here. It is truly magnificent. I’m really attracted to this Terai plain, which used to be a jungle until the British cut down all the trees. People say you sometimes see wild elephants charging around and leopards. I feel good here, so I walk and walk before continuing on my way to Darjeeling. Why beeing in a hurry when it’s so beautiful around?

On the way to school in Kurseong

27 August 2010

Almost the beginning of the new school year ! In Kurseong (India), these schoolboys jump on the Toy Train’s bandwagon and hold on the outside, not because the train is packed, but simply because it’s actually more fun doing the journey with the head in the breeze.

They laugh, say hello to the people they know when the train crosses a village: a pleasant way to get to school.

Tea pluckers in the mist of Badamtam

10 August 2010

In the middle of summer, a bit of freshness is always welcome. Like this refreshing mist coming from the foothills of the Himalayas. People there are so used to living in the clouds that this humidity is part of their life and no-one pays any attention to it. It’s actually not unpleasant, just look at the faces of these tea pluckers and you’ll see that no-one seems depressed by it. They look like they’re having fun, in fact.
This is at Badamtam, a magnificent plantation located in the north of Darjeeling, across from Sikkim.

Just a detail: do you see the umbrella in the basket? Well, it is actually used when the sun comes out, to provide shade and keep a nice complexion.

To choose tea, you need to have a good nose

3 August 2010

When you taste tea, you first start by smelling it. This is a very important stage in the tasting process. You look at the infused leaves, inhale them and by doing so you already get lots of information on the tea. You could for example easily detect problems such as an over-drying, an overly long oxidization process if it’s black tea, or inappropriate fermentation. But of course it also allows you to identify the qualities of the tea and the different scents you could find again in the cup in more or less similar ways.

It’s only after smelling the infused leaves (what is called “infusion” in the trade) that we actually taste the liquor itself.

Here, in Badamtam (Darjeeling), Binod Gurung has his eyes closed. His nose is plunged in the damp, warm leaves. He inhales, analyses, all in a state of complete concentration.

Cheerful plucker looking like a tea missionary

16 July 2010

On the Terai plain (area straddling Nepal and India), I’ve seen them use strange crosses to mark the height of tea plants. The cross is stuck into the ground and only the shoots growing above the horizontal bar are plucked. It makes this cheerful plucker look a bit like a tea missionary.

A tea tree’s natural inclination

22 June 2010

Last Friday, I told you about a clever mechanical system developed to make tasks easier for tea pluckers working on steep grounds (see the article). But you may wonder why tea is cultivated on such abrupt fields. Let me tell you why: unlike rice, tea trees like keeping their feet dry and can only be produced on a very well drained area. An inclined ground is therefore ideal for their growth, as the rainwater runs away. In flat tea plantations, farmers must then install a draining system to keep bushes healthy. It would be as well to make the most of a natural environment, much simpler and less expensive!

On this photo taken on the very steep Namring Tea Estate near the Himalayan mountains, notice the tea trees’ difference of colours. On the foreground, the harvest has already been done, whereas in the background, the light-coloured young shoots have not yet been plucked.

A ski-tow for tea

18 June 2010

Tea can be difficult to transport when the ground slopes. I already talked to you about it a few weeks ago, I explained how the horse could be a precious help to transport tea in Nepal (see the article). For the men and women who work on the plantations, it can also be very difficult sometimes to haul up their baskets full of tea leaves. All the more so since the garden where the leaves are harvested and the building where they are then processed are not necessarily at the same height.

Some tea plantations have thus developed a mechanical system we could compare to a ski-tow, to transport the bags full of tea leaves. At Namring Tea Estates (India) for example, tea pluckers hang two or three bags at the end of a rope fixed onto a cable, which are then hauled up mechanically. A solution making tasks easier for men and gaining time as well.

In this photo, Mister Chaudhury and one of his assistants seem to be gazing at these sacks climbing unaided.

Darjeeling, its violence, its hope

4 June 2010

I feel sad today. A guy, a political leader to be a little bit more precise, has been assassinated in Darjeeling. In facts, violence has been raging in Darjeeling for 30 years. Tension is often tangible. And blood sometimes flows.

To explain the problem to you in a few words and in a way that is much too brief, Darjeeling, where mainly Indians of Nepalese origin live, is located at the extreme north of the Indian State of West Bengal. In this particularly backed-off spot, roads are in a disastrous state, water is scarce, infrastructures are generally in an apalling state. Thus, many inhabitants of these mountains wish to create a new state called “Gorkhaland” within the Indian Union. And this, in order to stop keeping waiting for money that never comes from Kolkata and to enjoy an easier life like the Sikkim neighbour who depends directly from the Central State, namely Delhi.

I hope that they will be able to solve these problems using reason rather than violence. Couldn’t the inhabitants of Darjeeling be given normal life conditions, suitable roads, running water and some autonomy so that they can decide what is best for themselves?

Between political leaders who don’t do anything, those who are corrupted, those who make promises the day before elections and forget them the following day, those who divide instead of assembling and those who arouse masses, people would be in a grief to decide who to confine their destiny to.

I choose this adorable toddler, coiled up in his mother’s arms with his life in front of him, to wish Darjeeling, its mountains I love so much and these Nepalese people who are dearest to me, a better future.

The little Darjeeling train comes by… and it’s chaos !

30 April 2010

The little Darjeeling train is special because it likes to cross the road a number of times. It travels slowly, and so inevitably creates traffic jams, which the tourists love because it gives them time to take pictures.
I like the fact that this little train of Darjeeling has the same familiarity with my blog as it has with the road, and crosses it from time to time, whenever it takes its fancy. It’s as if we must give way to it, and wait patiently while it passes.

A clever trick to ensure a quality tea harvest

23 April 2010

On some tea plantations, they use a long bamboo stick to ensure a quality harvest. This photo taken in the Nilgiri (India) shows how it is used: the plucker has placed it in front of her and only takes the shoots that extend beyond it. This prevents the plucking of the previous season’s leaves, which are tougher and don’t produce good tea.