Travel for Tea

Few things speak to a Brit abroad more than a good cup to tea, so it’s quite a surprise that not every Englishman in the Indian Subcontinent has flocked to the Makaibari tea estate in Darjeeling. Nestled amongst hectares of virgin rainforest in the foothills of the Himalayas, Makaibari was the first tea estate in the world to be given Fair Trade certification and the first in Darjeeling to become 100% organic. What is more, in 2006 Makaibari set the world record price for the most expensive tea ever sold at auction. A tea garden where it is grown, will instantly tell you why. 

Makaibari is run as a business as, inevitably, it has to make money to survive. However, it is also an experiment in environmental and social sustainability, and it is this that sets it apart. Over 30 years of innovations have clearly produced a well-oiled machine, but the estate management, a joint body of predominantly female elected representatives from the workforce, is always keen to test out new ideas. Volunteers, everyone from gap year students to environmental researchers, agriculture experts and followers of the philosopher Rudolf Steiner, are encouraged to come to Makaibari, learn, share their skills, and then to go away and spread the estate’s way of life: a belief in the inter-dependence of everything.

In the neighbouring village of Kurseong there are a number of small hotels, but the best way to get to know the estate it to live there with a family. A proportion of profits from tea sales has been put into equipping and running homestays for volunteers and tourists alike. 21 families, spread through Makaibari’s seven villages, supplement their income by hosting guests at a reasonable rate of $25 per couple per night and including all meals. Each homestay has had a western-style toilet installed, so you’re safe from having to use a squat in the garden in the middle of the night.

Volunteers can get involved with every aspect of estate life. For those with an interest in conservation, tasks range from recording sightings of snow leopards and red pandas, to assessing the extend of bio-diversity in different parts of the estate. A tail-less amphibian, believed to be extinct for over 80 years, was discovered and identified at Makaibari last year, attracting interest from both the local press and CNN. Tree planting is an ongoing activity of vital importance as tree roots hold the soil together in an area otherwise prone to landslips. The tree planting programme seems to be working as Makaibari is the only tea estate in the region that has not suffered from landslides in recent years; elsewhere, as soon as the heavy monsoon rains fall, there are insufficient numbers of deep-rooted plants to prevent the soil from being washed away, taking with it people, their homes and livelihoods.

Women’s empowerment has been at the core of Makaibari’s development strategy from the very beginning. As mentioned previously, the joint management body is dominated by women and, unusually in the tea industry, the estate also employs female supervisors. Each household has been given two cows and access to a bio-gas converter to relieve women of the burden of collecting firewood for cooking, and it also provides them with an additional source of income as they can sell the manure back to the estate as organic fertiliser. Volunteers can help by providing training for would-be entrepreneurs, many of whom already take advantage of Makaibari’s micro credit scheme. Know-how on anything from production methods to computer literacy, book keeping and marketing is invaluable, and the estate’s women are incredibly keen to learn.

Education motivates both workers and their families at Makaibari and is well-supported by the management. A regular cycle of English speaking volunteers are required to teach English in the estate’s schools; regular conversation with a native speaker gives Makaibari’s students a real head start over their peers. Education also takes place outside the classroom. Volunteers recently designed posters and other visual aids explaining the importance of good hygiene in staying healthy and took them around the estate’s villages as a mini, touring exhibition.

Makaibari is 100% organic and has been since the late 1980s. In addition to the cow dung fertiliser, a number of other biodynamic preparations are used in the fields. These include stags’ bladders, cow horns, ground quartz and other natural, if unusual, products. Rudolf Steiner, the philosopher behind biodynamic agriculture, believed that this particular combination of fertilisers, spread on the fields at the right time of the month, would channel cosmic and earthly energy into the roots of the plants, making them stronger and healthier. 

At the end of a long day’s work which, though rewarding, is inevitably tiring, a walk through the estate is a balm for the soul. Dense, lush rainforest adjoins emerald green fields, both of which cling to the mountain precariously. In picking season (approximately March to October), lines of brightly clad women spiral through the fields like flocks of tropical birds, resplendent in pink, yellow and red. In the distance you can see the land fall suddenly away as it meets the dusty plains of northern India, its hazy horizon seemingly a world away from verdant Makaibari.

Darjeeling (un)Limited

My apologies in advance for the erratic layout of this post - I am in Dubai and so blogspot has auto-set to an Arabic language version, including setting all my lines and some of the punctuation as if I were writing right to left!

 If you saw Wes Anderson’s film The Darjeeling Ltd. and thought you might like to recreate the adventure, start well before the plot begins and take a pilgrimage to Glenburn. It was whilst staying on this, the most magical of tea estates, that Anderson conceived the idea for the film. Quite frankly, he could hardly have been anything but inspired.

Some 600km from Kolkata and an hour or so from Darjeeling town, the Glenburn Tea Estate clings to the foothills of the Himalayas, bordering the kingdom of Sikkim. Kanchenjunga, the world’s 3^rd highest mountain, dominates the horizon and two rivers, the Rungeet and the Rung Dung, entwine themselves as they run through valleys not out of place in a Tolkien novel. Overlooking it all is the Burra Bungalow, Glenburn’s boutique hotel and former home of the estate manager, your host Sanjay Sharma.

Other than the spectacular natural environment, there are two things that set Glenburn apart from other places to stay in Darjeeling or, indeed, elsewhere in the world. Firstly, you will never be crowded by other people. There are just four rooms in the Burra Bungalow and another four are due to open later this year. The result of this is that it simply doesn’t feel like a hotel; you are a guest in a home, welcome to roam around the estate all day and then return for drinks, dinner and lively conversation around the giant dining table once darkness falls. Next, the attention to detail of Glenburn’s staff (who outnumber guests five to one) is second to none. Freshly prepared picnics, afternoon tea and fresh juice appear from nowhere across the estate whether you are trekking the 2 hours down to the river or merely mooching in the garden. The food, ingredients for which are grown organically on the estate wherever possible, is exquisite and guests are treated to both Nepali and Naga dishes as well as international cuisine. The homemade breads and chocolate brownies slip down a treat.

Lest you think that Glenburn exists to provide a tourist paradise, you need to think again. Huge energy is undoubtedly put in to making the Glenburn experience perfect for visitors but the fact remains that the estate’s principal business is tea. The estate comprises 1600 acres of tea and jungle and employs around 900 people in tea production. A population of 4700 people is supported by the estate, which clothes and feeds them as well as providing health care and education. The estate’s management take responsibility for local development and if you’re interested will share every aspect of their work with you, from factory tours and tea tastings to school and hospital visits. Glenburn offers you an unrivalled opportunity to retreat from the rest of the world but also the chance to understand and engage with the community that works and lives on the estate.

The Price of Tea

The Darjeeling district of West Bengal clings to the southern slopes of the Himalayas, nestled between Nepal, Bangladesh and India. Best known for the 10,000 tonnes of premium grade tea it produces each year, the region is wholly dependent on the tea industry for survival. Tea production comes at a high environmental price, however, and new strategies are required to protect the hillsides, forests and fauna from destruction. Numbers of red pandas, snow leopards, Himalayan black bears, Tibetan wolves, deer, wild dogs and civet are all declining due to deforestation and the encroachment of man.

There are over 90 tea estates in Darjeeling with some 22,000 hectares of land under tea cultivation. Commercial planting began in Darjeeling in 1841 with plants introduced from China, and since then large areas of virgin rainforest have been cleared to expand the tea plantations. Tea can be grown up to 7000 ft and terracing is widely used to maximise space on the hillsides and provide tea pickers with easy access to the bushes. The removal of tree cover and preference for terraced estates would not be such a problem if it were not for the fact that Darjeeling receives an annual rainfall of 110.9 inches. Almost a third of this falls in July alone, taking with it the top soil and causing devastating land slips. Not only does this wipe out fields of tea but also homes, roads and wildlife habitats. The desire to increase cultivation is in fact threatening the very survival of the hillsides that support the tea industry. 

The only way to stem the destruction of habitats in Darjeeling is to take a wider, more ‘holistic’ view of how a tea estate should be run; financial gain cannot be the sole priority if the industry is to survive in Darjeeling long-term. Rajah Banerjee, owner of the Makaibari Tea Estate, is spearheading a new approach to tea production and has made a name for himself across the subcontinent (and further afield) as one of India’s ‘Green Heroes’. Rajah runs Makaibari in accordance with the principles of bio-dynamism, believing that healthy soil, diverse flora and fauna, a satisfied community and high-quality crop production go hand in hand.

When he took control of the estate in the 1970s the first thing that Rajah did was to stop the clearing of trees for the expansion of tea planting. Today 2/3 of the 1574 acre estate is still under virgin rainforest, which provides habitats for wildlife including endangered snow leopards, red pandas and wolves, and helps keep the hillside intact; not a single landslip is visible in Makaibari in stark contrast with neighbouring estates. The rainforest provides a diverse and regular supply of vegetable matters that can be spread as mulch between the tea plants.  The ground between the tea plants is never weeded (a practice known as perma-culture) and so they break down with the added mulch into a compost rich in minerals, it protects the soil underneath from the assault of wind and rain, and it also provides a fertile breeding ground for insects. A giant earthworm unseen for the past 120 years has made its reappearance in Makaibari’s soils, and the Tea Deva, a variant of the Preying Mantis that is camouflaged to accurately imitate a tea leaf, has evolved on the estate. 

Makaibari’s workers, all of whom are stakeholder partners in the estate, are encouraged to take individual responsibility for their environment. Instead of stripping the forests for firewood each family cares for a cow, whose manure is added to biogas converters to provide fuel for cooking and can also be spread on vegetable gardens as fertiliser. Workers are given financial incentives to bring live specimens of rare insects and invertebrates to the attention of management so that they can be examined by experts before re-release back into the estate. This has allowed study to take place of breeding habits, preferred habitats, population numbers and so on. 

Rajah and his workers encourage diversity of organisms at Makaibari by using only organic fertilisers and no pesticides. The estate was the first in Darjeeling to be certified as organic (1988) and since then many others have followed in their tracks, recognising the appeal of organic farming to consumers and also its importance for good environmental practice. The alternative fertilisers used on Makaibari are all recommended in the theories of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian Philosopher challenged to rejuvenate Europe’s soils after the ravages of WWI. They include cow manure, a not uncommon choice for a natural fertiliser, but also more unconventional products such as ground quartz, oak bark, cow horns and stag bladders. Whatever the theoretical reasons behind their use, on the Makaibari estate this unorthodox approach is certainly paying dividends: a Makaibari white tea has held the world record price for tea sold at auction ever since 2006 and soil samples taken on the estate have shown higher nitrate levels and greater biodiversity than anywhere else in Darjeeling. 

Photos C. Tracing Tea 2008