One of the things I really wanted to see in Kerala was a tea plantation – my desire to see a tea plantation was simply because my mom is a big tea drinker so I felt that she should see a tea plantation while in India – plus I had been told we just had to go to a hill station and that is where the tea is so there we went. And boy did we see some tea. There were miles and miles and miles of plantations all around. The plants all grow to the same height and are very very green so from afar it almost looks like the greenest grass you have ever seen just going on forever. Some of the plants do look to be a darker green than others, probably just the way the sun hits them; and some of them had an almost reddish hint on the top of them. It is difficult to explain how something so simple could be so beautiful but it was. We saw women working some of the plantations, walking through picking off the leaves by hand, working quickly but carefully. The really crazy bit is that it is all relatively new, tea was only introduced into the area in the early 1900’s, the town grew around it and now it is THE business and the livelihood.
And now for a funny story. At our hotel I asked for green tea after dinner and they didn’t have any! Ha! We are surrounded by more tea plants than I ever knew existed and they didn’t have green tea.
I could talk about tea for ages but I have a sneaking suspicion that after a while it could get a bit boring, so I’m going to add two of my favorite photos of the tea plants and let them speak for themselves. As always I recommend clicking on the photos to get a better picture, especially the second one.
First, an up close shot, you can really see how they are all the same size and shape (the big trees are used for shade on some of the plantations)...
And far away, they just go on for miles...
Next post will be about why I kept humming songs from the Sound of Music...
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