Tea Museum

 In Munnar we visited the Tea Museum, which is actually a still-functioning processing plant on one of the plantations.  The tall thin trees growing on the tops of the hills are eucalyptus, which were brought in from Australia because they grow so quickly.  They're used for timber to stoke the furnaces used in the tea plant, which seemed to still be using equipment from around WW1.  Along with lots of photos of the English colonial overlords being carried around in hammock-like devices up and down the plantation slopes and elephant herds grazing amid the tea plants, we saw a working tea processing plant.  We learned that the women - it's always and only women - who pick the tea leaves pick around 35 kilograms a day, for which they are paid 160 rupees, which is just under four dollars.  Tea is actually a tree, but they cut it every few years to maintain it at a height of around three feet; if not, a tea tree can reach 40 feet or so.  A tea plant can produce viable leaves for tea for over 100 years, but only the bright green leaves can be used; once they're dark green they have no flavor and serve only for photosynthesis for the tree itself.  We are told in excruciating detail about the C-T-C process, and all the Indians (it was practically all Indian tourists except for us and one British family) nod knowingly.  I don't and ask him what the hell CTC stands for.  He looks disappointed, though not particularly surprised, at how stupid foreigners are, then says "Crush Tear Curl."  That's what the machine does to the dried tea leaves in order to reduce them to a fine dusty powder that can actually be used to make tea.  The whole plant smells wonderful; the whole air in Munnar smells like tea and fresh grass, and it was extraordinary after three months in Kabul to breathe clean air.  Anyway, 4 kilograms of tea leaves yield one kilo of dried tea which is then crushed, torn and curled.

All tea, black, green or white, comes from the same plant; it's just processed differently.  After the CTC process, black tea is oxidated for 45 minutes - which is why black tea doesn't have great anti-oxidant properties.  Also, if you think about it, it means that black tea is rusted.  Green tea is made by boiling and then drying the leaves, but not oxidating.  White tea comes from just the small flowery buds of the tea plant; the buds are curled and then dried and then are ready for tea making.  Texas tea was nowhere to be found. We get a green tea with milk from the factory, and it is the best tea I have ever tasted.

Transportation and Its Necessities

 Here we see an Indian family going wherever it is they need to go, somewhere in the Munnar region.


And then there is the roadside rest room facilities.  English is flexible here; perhaps the actual procedure is "pay and use," as the top line indicates.  Or perhaps it's "pay in use," in which case it would probably be best to have the change handy, lest you have to twist around for your wallet en el acto, with potentially embarrassing results.

Views from Tall Trees

Fog and Tea

 And here we are walking in the foggy tea plantation.  OK, technically in the photo we're just standing there, but immediately before and after the photo, we were walking.

Tea Plantations and Fog

In Munnar's hillside tea plantations, the fog starts rolling in most days around 3:30 or 4 pm.  Sunset is around 6 pm, but by then it's as gray and bleak as an English moor in the Baskervilles.  These shots are within 15 minutes of each other, so you can see how quickly the fog envelopes everthing.

There was a light rain while we were walking, though it rained heavily that night.  We were with a couple from Chennai, and the woman asked nervously if we might step on snakes while walking between the plants.  The boy who was guiding us laughed at the thought.  "Only leeches," he said.  The decision to wear open-toed sandals and shorts wasn't looking so good at that moment, and in fact, the second time we did the plantation evening walk, while we escaped with no visible leech attacks, the young Indian woman with us had several on her pants leg by the time we finished.

Munnar Plantation Plants

 Next will be the tea plantations themselves, but for starters: wild coffee plants with their beans clearly visible; a plant whose name we are not told but whose bright yellow fruit is poisonous; and finally, cardamom pods growing at the base of bamboo.  These were actually the most common plant, except for tea, that we saw in Munnar, and the combination of bamboo-cardamom was always there.

Tall Trees

 We spent two nights in the Tall Trees lodges.  It was a great place: bedroom with a terrace on the lower level looking out over the tea fields and rain forest, spiral staircase leading up to the main level with a sitting room, another balcony, and the door to the paths that wound up toward the restaurant and walking paths linking the individual lodges.  But for longer walks, we went about an hour before sunset, just as the fogs started rolling in, on paths through the tea fields.  Though we didn't see any that evening, we were assured that often wild elephants would come down from the hills and trudge through the tea fields; the drivers were strategizing about where to park the cars at night to minimize the chance for damage in case the elephants came.  These are three views from our lower terrace.