India Archives - Tea Journey

Anything for Tea: Budget Backpacking in Nilgiris

Buddies Cafe in Ooty. This cafe is the largest tea room in India, which features over 220 varieties of tea: artisanal and hand-crafted single-origin teas, orthodox blends, tisanes, and CTC dust. When I first entered the cafe, Nirmal Raj stood next to a wall of transparent glass tea canisters and opened them enthusiastically to allow customers to inhale as he spoke animatedly about each tea. After leaving my non-heated hostel, I chanced upon the cafe, searching for a warmer place to write from. As a shoestring budget backpacker, I had traveled to the Nilgiris tea-growing region on an overnight bus from Bengaluru, India, and soon found myself returning daily to Buddies Cafe.

by Anesce Dremen

A Local Tea Movement Brewing in Assam

What started as a conversation about the qualities that make the teas of Assam so appealing has since developed into a collaboration with marginalized, small-size tea growers to provide natural loose-leaf “home grown” tea.

by Anesce Dremen

A Remarkable Quest Reveals Untold Chapter in Tea History

From Hwuy-Chow Foo, a tea-growing district in Anhui, China to Pauri, India, the Nilgiris, Munnar, and Chennai … the Ajoo family story traverses an untold chapter in the history of Indian tea, a road James Ajoo is trying to retrace, “to say I landed my feet where my ancestor had walked.”

by Aravinda Anantharaman

Music Video: Railgadi Jhumur

“The indentured migrant laborer community of the tea plantations in Assam and North Bengal in India, has always intrigued,” writes […]

by Dan Bolton

Advocating Artisan Tea for Smallholders in Assam

The Tea Leaf Theory team is very lean, choosing to remain independent, bootstrapped, refusing certifications, they represent a new kind of startup, modern yet rooted in something traditional, ancient even. There’s the social impact but Tea Leaf Theory is not an NGO working for small farmers. “We want to make them entrepreneurs, not beneficiaries,” say co-founders Upamanyu Borkakoty and Anshuman Bharali.

by Aravinda Anantharaman

Sikkim’s Temi Tea

Sikkim’s Temi Tea has protected and sustained its legacy. But it also made this legacy a part of its brand story, one that complements its topnotch tea.

by Aravinda Anantharaman

Forest Pick Wild Tea from Manipur

Three sisters from Manipur, India, and their brother launched Forest Pick Wild Tea about two years ago. Together they organized villagers to harvest tall-grown tea trees on a schedule, arriving with portable processing equipment to make artisan oolong, black, green and white teas. “Irrespective of the market size or market opportunity, Forest Pick Wild Tea is not another start-up, but an eco-system we are creating in which all the villagers participating will benefit.” — Julie Gangte

by Aravinda Anantharaman

The Gentleman Planter of Craigmore

Given that the Indian tea industry is struggling, Craigmore Tea Estate’s profitability offers important insights. The estate produces orthodox green and black tea, with the former exported and the latter sent to the auctions. Over the years, the balance has tilted to favor more green tea production to meet the demand.

by Aravinda Anantharaman

India’s Oldest Manager in Tea

KOOMTAI, Assam – Forty years ago executives of Goodricke Group, which had just split from Duncan Brothers & Company Ltd., […]

by Pullock Dutta

Chicken in the Pot

Straight out of university with a masters in English, I found myself at age 22 up in the High Ranges […]

by Gurrinder

Announcing the Incredible India Issue

Long before cut, tear and curl (CTC) dominated tea processing in the West, India exported sizeable quantities of handmade orthodox tea to an appreciative world market. Small factories at small gardens cultivated the art of rolling

by Dan Bolton

Harvest Review: Assam’s Smallholders Inherit the Land

Jorhat, Assam The vast Brahmaputra Valley holds the world’s greatest concentration of tea. Commercial production began 180 years ago in […]

by Pullock Dutta

Origin India: Rimpocha the Legacy of Makaibari

Siliguri, West Bengal During his 47-year stewardship of Makaibari Tea Estate, one of India’s oldest and most celebrated tea habitats, […]

by Dan Bolton

Origin India: Discovering The Wild Tea Forest of Assam

Pradip Baruah was born curious. He spends much of his time in the office and lab as chief advisory […]

by Pullock Dutta

Origin India: Kangra Valley

A scant 2,000 kilometers west of Darjeeling, on the opposite side of the Indian subcontinent, lays a scenic valley of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, a place steeped in Hindu mythology.

by Frank Miller

Origin India: Tamil Nadu and Kerala

The Western Ghats, South India Backbone of South India The six-hour drive south from Balanoor Tea Estate in Karnataka to […]

by Frank Miller

Origin India: The Deep South

Balanoor Tea Estate, Karnataka Piece of Cake His birthday was celebrated in a leafy residential section of Bangalore, one […]

by Frank Miller

Origin India: Garden by the River

It took ten years for Rajiv Lochan to acquire and consolidate various plots into a single garden known as Doke Tea, an organic farm along the south bank of the Doke River in Bihar, India.

by Dan Robertson

Kanchenjunga: Five Treasures of the Great Snow Mountain

Parts of Nepal, Tibet, India and Bhutan are within view of Mt. Kanchenujunga a majestic icon whose five peaks look down on famous tea gardens in Darjeeling, Sikkim, Kalimpong, Pedong, Ilam, Hile and Taplejung.

by Dan Robertson

Origin India: Discovering The Wild Tea Forest of Assam

Pradip Baruah was born curious. He spends much of his time in the office and lab as chief advisory officer at the Tocklai Tea Research Institute (TRI) in Jorhat, Assam, but loves an adventure whenever the opportunity arises. In January he fulfilled one of his long held dreams on a walk into the jungles of Assam where he photographed an ancient wild forest of Camellia Assamica, a species of large-leaf tea distinct from China’s Camellia Sinensis.

by Pullock Dutta

South India Sale Continues as North Awaits Production

Sale of tea continues in the south Indian auctions while north India awaits sufficient volumes as early season still underway. The early Darjeeling first flush is quickly being picked up in private sales.

by Aravinda Anantharaman

Light Rains Point to Promising First Flush

A weekly report on global tea prices by market that includes data and details on price averages at tea averages, weather conditions during harvest periods, labor availability and other developments influencing prices, and expert views.

by Aravinda Anantharaman