While the sky is often overcast in Darjeeling during the summer months, it is often clear from the end of October.
It is then possible to admire the view of the Kanchenjunga range from the promenade that starts at Chowrasta, in the centre of the city.
I don’t know how you usually dry your laundry. If you have a beautiful landscape in front of your house, like here, with tea plants on your doorstep, the bushes make an excellent structure on which to hang out your clothes. This method is adopted on many plantations.
It just goes to show how many uses there are for the tea plant.
In a month’s time, the Darjeeling season will be over.
The temperature will drop and the tea plants will go dormant. Before then, a few autumn or “third flush” teas are still being produced, and there are other jobs to be getting on with, like here, at Delmas Bari, where the young shrubs are being tended to.
These ones are now big enough to leave the nursery and be planted out in the ground.
Because I visit the production regions regularly I am able to stay abreast of changes that take place on the plantations.
I’ll give you an example: today, a garden like Runglee Rungliot is completely unknown among the public, and justifiably so – it does not produce good tea.
But for things to change radically, all it needs is an experienced planter to come and work at the garden. The tea plants, the altitude, the orientation: this place has it all, and one day it will produce top quality teas.
Sometimes I hear people say that they would drink tea if only they knew how to go about it, and that they worried about getting it wrong.
But tea is simply this, as Sen No Rikyû said: heat the water, make the tea, and drink it as it suits you.
Among the most experienced planters in Darjeeling, JD Rai is one of the best. I got to know him when he was in charge of the Margaret’s Hope estate.
This year I was delighted to see him again at the Thurbo plantation where he is now in charge. JD Rai is making some excellent teas there.
His expertise reaches beyond his own tea estate as he also supervises work on four or five other gardens.
And, unlike most planters in Darjeeling who come from the plains, JD Rai is from Darjeeling. He’s at home here.
Life is about meeting people, about trajectories that follow one another or cross paths. Life is a path.
I dedicate this photo to Emilie who has looked after my blog since it started. I record my thoughts, but it is Emilie who presents them so beautifully. She gives them titles. She also searches through my many photos, sometimes cropping one for better effect. And she gives my writing a second life on the social networks.
Emilie is now taking another path, and I’ll miss her. I’d also like to thank her for the quality of her work. I hope she enjoys the road ahead. And I hope it is as beautiful as this one, which winds its way between the tea plants towards Darjeeling.
When I meet tea producers we always exchange small gifts. It’s a nice way of expressing our pleasure at working together.
One of our Japanese suppliers with whom I’ve just spent the day has given me these delightful ceramic figures. I photographed them in the morning light, before making them an offering of a Gyokuro. Looking at them fills me with a sense of calm and wellbeing.
There are many ways of drinking tea. At home you can use a teapot, a mug, a “kyusu” or a “zhong”, to name a few…
When I visit farmers I discover other methods of preparing tea, sometimes using different equipment. So I adapt my approach to the tasting according to the method used. Here, with our producer of Dan Congs, the teas are infused three times in a row, in a zhong, and each infusion is poured immediately into one of the bowls set out in front. We taste each of the three liquors, and can then easily assess the tea’s potential to be prepared using the “Gong Fu Cha”.
