Dambatenne Tea Factory

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1^st Mar – today we went to a tea factory in a tuk tuk. I drove it up a steep winding road. I hated going past buses because I thought I was going to crash. When we got up we went into a tea factory, Liptons.
The process after picking; drying (16-hours) -> rolling (20-mins) –> cutting (x2) -> sieving (to get big bits out) -> fermenting -> drying (235 degc) -> bagging -> quality testing by factory manager. Jonathan

It was freaky because he didn’t have his hands on anything. The road had lots of bumps in. You had to keep your hand on the accelerator, and if you took it off the tuk tuk would jerk. We went to the tea factory it was four storeys high. The workers were all covered. It was really hot and stuffy because there were so many old machines. There were machines for every part of the process. We were really going close to the machines and you could just put your hands in the tea.

Parental facts - Dambatenne was founded by Sir Thomas Lipton in 1890. Tamil Hindu tea pickers were introduced by the British as the locals found the work "unfavourable". Current daily salary is 550 Rupees, which is less than 3 GBP, walking around their village you can see the impact of this low salary.

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Comments

[Grandad]

Lipton's Tea
Did you have the opportunity to have a taste for yourselves? My mouth waters!

[Sarah Thomas]

Driving!
Just a quick line to say we are all missing you in the class and have been looking at the blog. Canyoning looked fun if scary, and cold! And you have both been driving! Here it has gone back to being cold - 1 degree C today. Looking forward to reading about all your adventures.