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27 April 2007 -
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The hottest cuppa in the world It's 6.30am in my room at the old tea-planters' club in Darjeeling. The embers in the fireplace still retain a haunting warmth from the night before. My hot-water bottle has cooled to blood temperature. There is no other heating, so keeping warm at night in wintry West Bengal has become something of a preoccupation. There's a knock at the door. It's my 'bed tea', brought to me by the tiny, elderly man. I take the tray outside and, on the veranda, look up above the puffy white clouds to the jaggy Himalayas, where the majestic peak of Kanchenjunga sparkles white and hard. I steal back to bed to enjoy my steaming pot of tea, a proper ceramic one encased in a well-used cosy, complete with a strainer, a receptacle to catch the drips, a jug of milk and a bowl of sugar cubes. I know, because I have picked up a wrinkle or two from old Darjeeling hands, that the milk is a polite concession to those unfamiliar with the etiquette of Darjeeling tea. It should remain untouched because it would interfere with my appreciation of the bright amber liquor that splashes into my snowy white cup. After just a few days in Darjeeling, I have become addicted to tea. Now everywhere I go, and at every possible opportunity, I'm looking for my next cup and wondering how it will compare to the one before. Golden-green perhaps, a fresh tea from the Himalayan spring's first flush of sappy growth; a more fragrant, yellow-amber summer tea; or the deep orange, near garnet-coloured brew produced by the richer, deeper autumnal crop. Darjeeling is, of course, a distinguished name that has always stood for quality. Tea buffs call it the 'champagne of teas'. Tea was originally introduced to this region in 1841 by a Scottish surgeon, Dr Campbell. He had a hunch that Darjeeling, with its green, vertiginous slopes, high elevations (4,500-7,000ft) and abundant rainfall might make a good place for growing tea. He was right, and a century of production followed that established it as a region unparalleled for the world's finest black teas. After India became independent in 1947, the push was on to make the tea gardens as 'productive' as possible. The new owners dismantled the carefully constructed terraces that had stabilised the soil, cut down trees to pack in more tea bushes, and turned with great enthusiasm to the miraculous new generation of chemical fertilisers and pesticides that were being hawked by foreign corporations. This break from natural tea production proved disastrous. 'Most of the hills were denuded of vegetation, much of the topsoil was washed off and the soil was hard and dead because the weedicides killed off the useful micro-organisms,' explains Binod Mohan, director of Tea Promoters India, and son of one of the original Indian owners. The problems didn't stop there. Darjeeling had become dependent on selling most of its output as a bulk commodity to the Soviet Union through the traditional auction system. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, Darjeeling lost its biggest customer and its tea was not fetching the price needed to sustain production. Owners stopped reinvesting in the business, many gardens became hopelessly run down and were subsequently abandoned, causing extreme hardship for the majority of families in the area for whom tea was the only source of income. At its peak, Darjeeling had 120 tea gardens; now only 86 remain. A further issue of lax labelling emerged in the early Nineties: four times more tea than was actually being grown in the region was being sold as 'Darjeeling' in blends bulked out with inferior tea from other regions. Consumer confidence plummeted. But these days, there is a wind of optimism blowing through the area, and a growing sense that it is on its way to reclaiming its legendary status. The first obvious step was to protect the Darjeeling name. The Darjeeling Planters' Association and the Indian government have negotiated a geographical-origin trademark, approved by the World Trade Organisation. Now any tea that calls itself 'Darjeeling' must be 100 per cent from the region. But in an even more radical initiative, several of the top-rated tea gardens - Selimbong, Seeyok, Samabeong, Singell, Makaibari and Ambootia - have converted to organic production. 'Fifteen years ago my father stood up at a tea conference in Calcutta and argued that the Darjeeling tea industry must go 100 per cent organic. People listened politely, but did not take it seriously,' says Mr Mohan. 'But now we have more converts every year and some of the biggest tea groups are moving into organics.' Self-interest may be influencing the newer organic recruits. A surge in consumer concern about chemicals in food and drink has caused Darjeeling's best customers (Japan, Germany, the UK and, increasingly, France and the US) to impose stricter pesticide-residue limits. In Germany, where there is a profusion of specialist teashops, certain chains now have in-house laboratories to test for residues. Some packers of conventionally grown Darjeeling have had to blend it with organic tea to bring down the residues to an acceptable level. Whatever the motivation, organic tea is really taking off. That's a sentiment with which the predominantly female workforce at Seeyok, near the border with Nepal, would heartily agree. 'Converting to organic has made a vast difference to our lives,' says one of the gardens' progressive new breed of female managers, Juran Bhandari. 'Before, chemicals were hampering our health. It was like poison. We used to fall sick quite often with coughs, headaches and chest pains. The chemicals were so strong and we didn't have masks. Now we can breathe fresh air again.' Now Seeyok, in common with other organic-tea estates, has made the obvious move and also become Fairtrade. Being Fairtrade does not affect what workers earn because in India, all tea gardens are part of the plantation system. Workers are entitled to a certain wage which is negotiated by trade unions. Tea-garden owners are obliged by law to provide a basic level of accommodation, healthcare and education for workers. Once you have a job in a tea garden you have the job for life and can pass it down on retirement to another family member. What Fairtrade does bring, however, is a premium, a communal pot of additional money that the workers' welfare committee decides how to spend. Anju Rai, who works in the garden's tea factory, grading the tea for size, can reel off a long list of all the things that the Fairtrade money has made possible: 'An ambulance, loans at low rates of interest for buying a cow, school books for children, scholarships, cooking gas [so that trees are not cut down for fuel], mosquito nets and sewing machines.' On the day of my visit to Seeyok, everyone is excited. A large insect that looks curiously like a tea leaf has been found in the garden. Fifty years ago, before Darjeeling's chemical era, these beneficial insects were commonplace. Its reappearance underlines that organic methods are bringing big environmental benefits. Like many other farmers and producers throughout the sub-continent and Sri Lanka, Seeyok follows the biodynamic farming method advocated by the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, not because it is fashionable, but because it works. In all the organic gardens like Seeyok, that are owned by Tea Promoters India, the once-serried tea bushes have now been interplanted with trees like wild cherry and plants such as lemongrass and sunflower that feed the soil with nitrogen and also stabilise it so it cannot be washed away during monsoons. Chemical fertilisers have been replaced by natural worm composts, manures and biodynamic preparations made from plants such as yarrow and nettle, with impressive results. When there is any sign of the dreaded tea mosquito, the patch affected is sprayed with a natural insecticide, which is derived from the neem tree. These biodynamic gardens are making teas that are the antithesis of everything that is mass-produced and standardised; quite the opposite, in fact, from the teas we drink in Britain. The British have acquired a puzzling historic reputation as a nation of tea drinkers, but these days, we mainly consume the tea equivalent of Piat d'Or wine. Ninety-six per cent of all the cups of tea we drink are made from tea bags, which is like drinking bag-in-the-box wine. Because of our lazy tea-bag habit, we get through gallons of what is known as CTC (cut, torn and curled) tea. This undistinguished commodity tea is made by an automated manufacturing process geared to large-volume production. It breaks down the structure of the tea so that it yields a more or less instant dark brew, but most of the essential oils that give tea its character evaporate in the process. Much of the CTC tea in the world comes from bushes that have been harvested by suction machines, which cut out costly human labour but suck in bits of undesirable stem that reduce quality. Darjeeling is one of the few remaining tea-growing regions in the world that still remains faithful to the higher-cost 'orthodox' tea production method which begins with the labour-intensive, hand-plucked 'two leaves and a bud' of new growth. It takes a painstaking 20,000 individually plucked shoots to produce just one kilo of tea. It's mind-boggling how, when gently withered, rolled, oxidised and dried under the vigilant eye of an experienced tea maker, the same bushes can produce such a diverse sequence of teas. It starts with the fresh, slightly astringent first flushes from the most succulent new spring leaves with their floral scents that tickle the German palate. Then come the second flushes, munched by summer greenfly, which gives them the characteristic 'muscatel' scent unique to Darjeeling, which so excites Japanese buyers. Quality dips with monsoon teas, which are too damp to produce great results, but returns in the form of the stronger, smokier autumnal teas. Within these seasonal categories there are further variations; pure, refined 'China' teas made from the original bushes imported from China 150 years ago, more vigorous 'clonal' teas bred for specific growing situations from the best-performing bushes, and semi-fermented Oolongs, still made in the time-honoured way where the leaves are sun-dried and turned every 45 minutes. It would take a book to do justice to the spinach and seaweed-like green teas, the velvety Silver Tips and the 'special' hand-rolled teas like Silver Pearls and Twister, currently in vogue in France, which unfurl into elegant, whole leaves in the pot. These teas from top Darjeeling estates have always found a market among connoisseurs. But now the organic Fairtrade tea revolution is spreading like wildfire among independent farmers, previously marginalised by the traditional plantation system. 'The only small farmers really doing well at the moment are those who have moved into organic and Fairtrade tea,' says Andy Good, director of Equal Exchange, which has pioneered this type of tea in the UK. Although there are other Fair-trade companies selling organic Darjeeling, Equal Exchange is the only one that insists on having its teas packed at source so that the economic benefits of this 'value-added' activity stay in the country and region of origin. Equal Exchange imports its Darjeeling from Mineral Springs, where 150 farmers have formed the Sanjukta Vikas Co-operative and reclaimed and revived an old tea garden that had lain abandoned for 25 years. When this once-healthy tea plantation closed its gates in 1981, starving villagers uprooted most of the tea bushes to make way for subsistence farms of millet and maize, cutting down trees for firewood as they went, but poverty only worsened. Nowadays the highest parts of Mineral Springs are a nature reserve where bears and leopards roam. Just below, the co-op has transformed the run-down garden, little by little, into a patchwork of astonishingly productive small plots perched on terraces where vigorous tea bushes grow between crops of cassava, ginger, fig and squash, sharing space with cows, goats and chickens. The co-op cannot yet afford to rebuild its own factory, so sends its teas to be processed at the nearby Selimbong tea factory, a mutually satisfactory arrangement that makes Selimbong more viable. Morale is high all round, not least because the co-op, although it lacks the starry pedigree of the elite Darjeeling gardens, is producing remarkably good tea. 'We now have a winning product on our hands that champions the cause of small-scale tea farmers, is produced to the highest environmental standards, and which is of extremely high quality,' says Good. It's the same encouraging story over at Teesta Valley. Here, in 1998, 10 individual farmers started growing organic, Fairtrade tea at a time when the outlook looked pretty desperate. A virus had wiped out their one profitable crop, black cardamom, and wild boar were munching their way through the vegetables that they were growing. 'Many of our young men and women dropped out of school to earn money as security guards or housemaids in Delhi or Mumbai,' says Teesta Co-op chairman, Ram Singh Gurung. 'Singell [another organic Fairtrade garden owned by Tea Importers India] gave us free saplings to plant and we use their factory to make our tea. Now there are 51 of us in the co-op and a queue of other farmers, even whole villages, who want to join.' Whether it's the family farmer or a big tea estate, the new wave of organic and Fairtrade tea production sweeping through the region is breathing a new dynamism into Darjeeling. But as one of the few regions in the world still producing labour-intensive, classic tea, Darjeeling will always be vulnerable to cheaper, commercial teas from countries where production costs are lower. Unless, that is, consumers are able to appreciate the difference in quality. And that's the crux of the matter. If you have only ever known the dull brown, tannic swill that passes for tea in Britain, then it can take a little time to acquire a taste for fine Darjeeling. But take it from me, when you do, there is no going back.
Leave the Sackcloth at Home - Hampi and Dharamsala IT’S not often you meet a god. But on a pouring day last summer in Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan exile community in India, I did. In a monastery outside town, I was shown into a vast, bare room. At the front sat the 17th Karmapa Lama, third-ranking leader in Tibetan Buddhism — a figure considered almost a god by many Tibetans. The Karmapa fled Tibet when he was a boy, but in exile he had become a man, in his early 20s, with a broad, shaved head and meaty arms beneath his flowing monk’s robes. While religious-oriented travel has been around since the first pilgrimages, in recent years it has developed into a much larger and more segmented market, with niches ranging from high-end religious travel to volunteer-oriented religious travel to modern-day pilgrimages like a visit to the Karmapa. In the most notable example of high-end faith travel, this year, the ultra-luxury operator TCS Expeditions offered a $45,000 tour around the world called Great Faiths. On the trip, tourists were to take in the greatest religious sites in the world, from Varanasi’s sacred waters to Ethiopia’s subterranean churches — all on one excursion. They also planned to hop from site to site in private jets and spend evenings at luxurious hotels, from the King David in Jerusalem to the Oberoi in Delhi. Luxury spas in countries like India and Thailand have begun offering Buddhism-related packages for travelers coming for more prosaic services like massage. Or, you could take the traditional approach: Wander foreign lands until you find a site that seems holy to you. On one of my last days in Dharamsala, I attended Friday night services at the local synagogue. Standing outside, under the cover of a tarpaulin roof, rows of men in yarmulkes and women in traditional long Indian skirts rocked back and forth as they chanted joyous hymns welcoming the Jewish Sabbath. Later, after services, we all walked upstairs to a communal room, where we sat in rows on the floor, breaking off tiny pieces of challah and dipping them into communal bowls of hummus and salad. Across from me, a young Israeli traveler eagerly tore into his bread. “I just got out of the army — I’ve been here a few weeks,” he said. “I could stay here for months. I don’t even need to do anything here. Just be here.” Andy England, 39, a jewelry seller from Portsmouth, England, visits the remains of a capital city that was pillaged in 1565: ''I went with some friends through Goa for a three-week getaway, but we wanted to get a bit more of the cultural flavor of India, so we drove our small rental car inland to the modern city of Hampi and the ruins of Vijayanagar. There is a spectacular train from Goa that we should have taken. When we finally got there, we were shown around this enormous rocky site with hundreds of temples. It's one of the most important Hindu pilgrimage sites in India. You got a real sense that it was once a cultural epicenter for that part of India. On another level, you're just blown away by the scenery and the integration of the archaeology with the geology. It was an epic journey."
CHEERS FOR Chariots travelgirl recommends the Rath Yatra (Festival of Chariots) at Puri, India on July 16, 2007 Every year, in a small temple town on India's east coast, the gods take a vacation. The three deities that reside in Puri, Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra, are placed in raths, or chariots, and drawn by thousands of devotees to a temple two miles north. Pulling the rath is believed to be symbolic of life's journey and is a practice that blesses those involved. Ranked as one of the grandest celebrations on earth for its elaborate colors, multitude of participants and ability to unite people of all backgrounds, this is also the only day when non-Hindus and foreigners, who are not allowed in the temple, can openly view the sacred deities.
Get me to the Taj on time There was no place in the world, we figured, that couldn't be conquered in a few days by a group of determined middle-aged suburban fathers with wanderlust, carry-on luggage and the ability to power through jet lag. No place, that is, except perhaps India. Oh, how we wanted to see the Taj Mahal. We talked about it frequently, over drinks in South America, in the Middle East and at our homes in the foothills near Los Angeles. Our plan was to explore India's Golden Triangle, the 430-mile tourist route from Delhi to Jaipur to the Taj Mahal in Agra and back to Delhi. With air travel, we would cover about 14,430 miles and spend five days on the ground. Along for the ride were my regular travel companions, Richard Goetz and Steve Stathatos, and another friend from our first trip to Peru, Stan Blumenfeld. Our trip had the hearty endorsement of our spouses, none of whom wanted to endure such a long journey at such a quick pace. As our plane descended toward a night landing in Delhi, the weather in Delhi was 72 degrees. We headed straight for the Imperial, approaching the landmark hotel on a private driveway lined with two dozen king palms. The hotel was built in the waning days of British rule in the 1930s, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Mountbatten met frequently there to discuss the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan. We settled into soft leather chairs in the 1911 Bar (named for the year that King George V declared his plan to move the capital of India from Calcutta to a "new" Delhi) and gazed at the stained-glass roof, feeling a bit wobbly from the trek. Tall, frosty glasses of beer steadied us, though. We were up early the first morning and our first stop was Old Delhi and Jama Masjid, India's largest mosque, built in 1656. We climbed a narrow, circular stairway to the top of one of the minarets, marveling at the view of the Red Fort. As the afternoon warmed up, we took a walk through India's bloody history, starting with Gandhi Smriti, the colonial house where Gandhi was staying in 1948 when he was assassinated. Then we headed to Indira Gandhi's home, where the prime minister was shot in 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards while walking to an interview. Also on display at this simple white bunglow, are the sneakers and tattered tunic her son Rajiv was wearing when he was killed by a female suicide bomber in 1991. That night at dinner, we were nearly reduced to tears by Bukhara's version of dal — rich, flavor-packed dark lentils that had been simmered overnight with garlic, ginger and tomatoes. We had the overwhelming sense that this was the kind of meal you couldn't match in an Indian restaurant outside the subcontinent. Early on next day, we headed for the second point on the Golden Triangle, making the five-hour drive southwest to Jaipur, a city ringed by rough-edged hills, topped with walls and forts. Its most striking feature is the old town center known as the Pink City, named for the color it was painted for a 19th century visit from Prince Albert. Our first stop was the City Palace, built in the early 18th century by Jaipur's founder, Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh II. We hit the road early the next morning, the 145-mile stretch of rough two-lane from Jaipur to Agra. Entering Agra from the west, we headed for the Agra Fort, a vast fortified palace built by the Mogul emperor Akbar. It was at the fort's drawbridge entrance that we caught our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal, shimmering in the distance on the banks of the Yamuna River. The marble Taj is an architectural masterpiece, perfectly symmetrical with four minarets and matching mosques on two sides. Because worshipers must face east, only one of the mosques is functional; the other was duplicated for symmetry. The minarets lean slightly but noticeably outward, a design feature meant to prevent them from damaging the central dome in case of earthquake. From any angle the Taj Mahal is beautiful. Later, we checked into one of the most stunning hotels in the world, the 6-year-old Oberoi Amarvilas. At about $600 a night per room, it seemed outrageously expensive, but it was worth it: Every room opened onto a dead-on view of the Taj, less than half a mile away. We gathered on one of the rooms' balconies with a bottle of wine to celebrate our arrival. The hotel's beautifully landscaped grounds gave way to a thick green forest sweeping to the front of the Taj. As the sun set amid a smoky haze, we felt an overpowering sense of accomplishment. We toasted our shared desire to see the world and the satisfying journeys that had resulted. Rich told us how he had once assembled a list of things he wanted to see in his life. "I've now seen everything I wanted to see as a kid," he said. The view was so stirring that we all wished our wives and children could be with us. Steve said his wife would love it — but only if she could be magically transported from Los Angeles to this balcony and returned home the same way. For us, though, the destination was worth the trek. We wouldn't spend our lives wishing we had made the journey. |
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