Tea!

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One more full day until Varanasi.

I've been in Darjeeling over a week now, over two visits. It's hard to leave due to the holiday season celebrating Durga Puja, and now gearing up for Diwali. The good news is there are much worse places to be stranded in than Darjeeling. It's a beautiful and friendly place and I'd recommend a weeks stay there to anyone.

Today, it was all about the tea when Marc and I had a walk to the Happy Valley Tea factory and plantation.

We had a quick tour around the factory which showed us in about twenty minutes the tea processing stages from being picked, dried, separated, and packed. A tea leaf, for example, has three main parts, but only the middle stem is used for white tea and the other two bits are thrown away. This is why white tea is so expensive.

Afterwards we went for a cuppa at the Happy Valley Tea Cafe, which is run by the lovely owner Kusum, who is seventy years old but looks twenty years younger. Kusum laid out six different types of tea in bowls on the table and asked us if we could identity which teas were which. We actually managed to get most of them right and felt like proper experts!

Kusum talked about various tea matters for a while and then invited us to have a cup of tea each for 50 Rs, which she said would normally be 100 Rs if there had been more people in the cafe. It has an official name which is about twelve words long, so we'll call it Orange Tip Tea here. Harrods sell it for about two thousand pounds a kilogram. We were offered the opportunity to buy some here at an incredibly reduced price, with the money going to local tea pickers. Unfortunately we'd both spent a fortune on tea and had it sent home already so we politely declined. Kusum was great and didn't try and persuade us to buy it, she even posed for some photos and refused our offer to pay 100 Rs each as she'd been such great entertainment.

A lot of people in India are very kind in this way, such as the jeep driver who picked us up in the pouring rain and took us to Khecheopalri Lake, charging us next to nothing and refusing the offer of a tip. The same goes for transport stations where you can usual guarantee a local while take pity on you and assist you against the retro Indian bureaucracy of filling complicated forms in quadruple, or the random operating methods of jeep stands.

It balances against the people who approach you with something to sell, whether this is apparent at first or not.

Just before I set of for India a friend texted me to say "love everyone but trust no one". It's a really good way to view the country. Yes, a lot of people do end up requesting something from you after striking up a conversation, but not everyone does, and some people bend over backwards to help you. It would be a shame to treat them all with cynicism. The best way is to chat and wait until someone tries to scam you, and if they do, deal with it then rather assume everyone is up to something. Believe me it's easy to be cynical, especially after a week in a big city like Kolkata.

The strange contradiction about traveling in India in high season is that you have to sacrifice your freedom in order to get to where you want to go.

I had to book my train tickets as far in advance as possible up until after Diwali, and also from 20th December until I fly home on 8th January as they sell out so far in advance.

This means that you can't really do spur of the moment random things with other travelers too often, like my little trip to Sikkim, as my dates coming to and leaving places are set in stone. Still, at least I've got 9th November to 20th December to do anything I want to.

Next stop, The City of Light - but hopefully I will see the sunrise at Tiger Hill tomorrow, where on a clear day you can see Everest in the distance.

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Photos

Tea's Up!
Tea is served :)

Executive Orange Tip Tea
Apparently Harrods sell this exclusively for just under 2000 pounds a kilogram. But we got a cup each for 50 Rs.

... and the middle is used for ...
Kusum explains to me which part of the tea leaf is used for different types of tea