Tea Plantation

India may boast some of the world’s best tea varieties. Tea tourism remains a sporadic experiment in India, with limited outreach to the special-interest market. Kerala and Tamil Nadu are famous for different tea plantations. Mild and light oolong, black and green teas are grown and harvested year-round in the Nilgiris which are the of hills of southern India, running from Ooty in Tamil Nadu to Munnar in Kerala. My parents owned some of the tea plantations in Kerala and they used to tell us stories how they enjoyed their stay over there with a lot of workers working in that field. Even though both of my parents had their own jobs, but still both enjoyed owning such crops. We were small children at that time, and they had to sell that tea estate eventually and move to another part of Kerala, they still used to tell us a lot of stories about that place.

Aside from these regions, the foot of the Himalayas also has smaller tea gardens. Taking a tour can be a half-day endeavor.  People enjoy the scenic charm of tea gardens. Circuit based tea tourism covers every interest while mixing in slices of local life as well. India’s one tea museum run by Tata Tea is in Munnar, Kerala. The museum traces the evolution of the tea industry from way back in the 1980’s and houses an interesting array of relics and artifacts to guide one through the journey which people really enjoy. A tea bush is from one to one and a half meters in height and the tea leaves are mostly hand-plucked every 5 to 10 days. It takes 70 to 90 days for the plucked shoot (usually the top two leaves and a bud) to redevelop and an experienced person can pluck up to 30 kg of tea leaves a day. Four kilos of tea leaves are needed to make one kilo of black tea and one tea plant can produce 70 kg of black tea a year. An acre in a tea plantation in India yields from 450 kg to 680 kg.