Tea Gardens of India

There is a charm in the Tea Gardens of India that you do not find in other places. Visiting the plantation, the factory, and the workers is a pleasure most people are not able to get. So, consider yourself lucky if you take a trip. Tea gardens give you the feel of being 40 years behind time. It is the closest thing to travelling in time that anyone will ever experience.

You will find acres of tea bushes that look like lawns, interspersed with shade trees at regular intervals. You get the feeling of being in an eternal garden. They have everything that you can think of in terms of wildlife. Elephants, tigers, Garmin bluechart leopards and a whole host of other species call it their home. The birds are amazing and they beckon you like greeters at the doors of heaven.
The big bungalows, which house the manager and the Asst. Managers, are palatial structures and are from an era gone by. History shows its face everywhere, even in the face of the workers. They have been in the gardens for generations and some of them have not even seen the city 2 hours away. They are happy and content in their surroundings. It is common to find the workers themselves still living in thatched huts while they keep their livestock in the company provided house that each of them gets.

After work, they gather outside and spend the evening in dance and revelry. They indulge in something called the Handia, which is a rice wine fermented in clay pots, they get happy singing their songs and dancing the evening away. Then they go to sleep to start the cycle of life the same way the next day. They get their entertainment from socializing in public, which a lot of us have forgotten, due to the tax of everyday life and its requirements.

The wild life there does not generally attack people and it is very rare that one does. It is a concept of live and let live. Of course, if you challenge them, they will fight back. Elephants generally come in the evening as uninvited dinner guests. They come looking for the handia. They will break through a workers house in order to get to it. It is funny to see a drunken elephant walk, they are slipping and falling enough to make a Beverly Hills Attorney lick his chops.

The factory is another place worth visiting. It processes on an average 10,000 kilograms of made tea every day, of course there are big and small gardens. The smells there are out of this world. It is kind of a sweet freshness. That is a smell you can only experience there and no place else. There is big and old machinery sometimes still run by pulleys and belts and a big marine engine powering it.

This is an experience like no other. You will be able to see a side of life generally not seen by most people and experience it firsthand.

Binny Satin