Down To The Tea

Milky chai is for the common man in the plains. In the hills of Darjeeling, tea is all about balancing and brewing delicate flavours

- Sudha Pillai

The car winds its way up the hills, from Bagdogra to Kurseong to Tung. Night descends upon the hills swifter than in the plains. As far as the eye can see, there’s nothing but darkness with a smattering of lights—a black cloak with minimal sequins, typical of a place that’s made up of mostly tea gardens.

I am on my way to Margaret’s Hope Tea Garden. A hundred and fifty years old, stretched over 586.16 hectares, it is one of the eight tea estates in Darjeeling owned by the Goodricke Group Limited, the second largest producer of tea in India. Last year alone, the company produced 28.587 million kilos of tea.

The driver decides to take a less travelled route to avoid Darjeeling-bound uphill traffic. First, there was a road, then a semblance of it and soon it was just an illusion. Bones rattle inside my body, and I press my knuckles in my mouth. Oblivious to the quivering bone-sack in the backseat, the man behind the wheel miraculously navigates the vehicle on the narrow excuse of a road, avoiding collision with the occasional car coming downhill. Haunting Nepali folk songs from the stereo form the perfect score to this chilling drive. I am not even a tea drinker. How did I, a coffee drinker from South India, end up here? I shake my head in bafflement before it bumps into the side of the car—again and again.