The Tea Plantation

I was waiting outside the hostel at 5:15 drinking a coffee.
The guide and a couple of other guests would be here in a minute and I was watching the mountains and the sky as the sun attempted to rise.
The Greenview was situated on a muddy track on what could loosely be described as a residential area. There were a few bungalows, a number of parked tuk-tuks with their drivers asleep in them, and piles of stuff that looked like until recently it had been on fire. I yawned and looked at the chickens pecking at the ground near my feet.
Nearby a cockrell crowed.
Fuck it was early - I'd been awake before it.

As i waited, a little old lady emerged from one of the adjacent bungalows and, totally ignoring me, started flinging water from a bucket out into the road.
Now, let me explain; She wasn't pouring water into the street like you would if you were emptying a bucket after cleaning the floor, she was quite deliberately and methodically wetting the area of ground outside her home as if she was watering some unseen crop. I watched for a while, thinking that i'd really like a cigarette, when she retreated back in. Another lady, a few doors down from the first appeared, and repeated the same bizarre action. Lady #1 returned with a broomstick and started sweeping at the wet dirt, brushing it this way and that, shoving the small pebbles aside and moving the loose leaves and dirt away from her front door. She continued for a number of minutes, taking it all very seriously - attempting to remove any of the lumpy muddy mess from what was essentially, a lumpy, muddy messy track.
It reminded me of a task I'd been given on a character-building Jewish youth group visit to a kibbutz. At dawn we'd been woken, driven in an open-backed truck to a rocky field, and told to put all the rocks in the back of the truck. This field was going to be ploughed and cultivated, so it had to be clear of rocks. We spent all morning on it, 4 of us, and complained constantly.
The thing about this kind of kibbutz visit, is that it's basically slave labour masquerading as a communist utopia, which in an interesting capitalist twist, had to be paid for. When the truck was full, it drove off and we were left to survey our morning's handiwork.
6 hours of solid toil (and i think that this might actually be my first totally accurate use of that word), and the field looked exactly the same. The problem being that (a) it was a desert, so consequently, (b) there was nothing in the field but stones. Removing the stones did no good, as it simply revealed more stones underneath. Futile, but of course, character-building. Made me into the man i am today, etc.
I looked at these women, scrabbling and scrubbing in the dirt and wandered what the point was. What was the best possible outcome they were hoping for?
The other guests and Babu, the guide, appeared and we climbed into his jeep. I asked him what they had been doing. He told me that it was tradition in India to get up earlier than their husbands in the morning and clean the house, inside and out, so that when he woke, it would be nice and tidy. He said that they often cleaned the streets too, directly outside the house and even continued to do so after the husband had passed away as a form of respect.
The sensitive side of me thought that there was something really sweet about this, but also a little sad. The other side, the side that invariably wins the internal struggle, was thinking that in the unlikely event that i ever got invited to an Indian funeral, as a way of paying my respects, i'd bring the widow a Dyson and suggest that all the other mourners pay for her to get a patio.

We headed into the hills, myself, Babu, a Danish girl and an Italian guy. I didn't bother introducing myself to the others, as i didn't want them to get too attached. I was leaving that afternoon, and didn't really want to have to deal with the emotional hassle of a teary farewell.
As we climbed, Babu pointed out various things - mentioning the names of fauna, the heights of the surrounding mountains, and talking extensively about the history of the area. It was pretty steep and we climbed for a couple of hours, stopping every once in a while to rest and take photos of the spectacular view. Bizarrely, it reminded me of taking walks in Scotland. It was a lot hotter, but the terrain was similar and there was grass, heather-type-bushes and animal droppings everywhere. I mentioned this to Babu and he said that it was a common observation, and that perhaps that was the reason that it was a largely Scottish population that originally settled here from Britain.
We reached to top and Babu gave us each a bottle of water. It wasn't too hot, as it was so windy, but the sun was out in full force and there wasn't much in the way of cloud cover. We carried on walking down the other side and Babu said that he would take us down through one of the plantations. Strictly speaking, we weren't allowed in and we would be trespassing, but he said that these laws were designed for much larger tour groups and that because there were only 4 of us, it wouldn't be a problem. They wouldn't be harvesting this section for a week or so, so it was unlikely that we would bump into anyone who would challenge us. However, the idea that we were doing something wrong and possibly dangerous and illegal, excited me and made me feel like a character in an Alex Garland novel.
We continued down and stopped at the edge of a field for breakfast. Babu had brought hard-boiled eggs, readymade toast, jam and fruit, and while we ate, he told us about the local tea industry.

First, before i forget: All tea is Chinese. I didn't know that. Did you?
Oh... Well anyway:
There were over 10 estates in the area, each one employing and housing around 50 families. The women worked in the fields and the men in the tea-processing factories at the bottom of the valley. Only the topmost leaves were picked, and done so by hand or with scissors (depending on the grade), in each field on rotation every 2 weeks. The children were all educated in schools on the grounds.
A routine workday would start t 8am with 30mins teabreak at 11, lunch at 1:30, another teabreak at 3:30 and would finish at 5. He told us that most of Munnar was employed thus and that although a lot of the younger generation were no more interested in pursuing college and careers in the cities, enough of them, attracted by the easygoing, outdoor lifestyle, stayed to keep the industry run by local families. It didn't pay much, but each of the workers was provided a home and paid a pension of shares in the estate. This meant that although not one person individually owned a huge stake in the company, combined, 70% was owned by the working families. They were also able to supplement their incomes by growing vegetables in their gardens and selling them at local markets.
It sounded idyllic.

We finished eating and descended into the maze-like mosaics of the tea fields.
The tea plant needs a lot of water but cannot grow in waterlogged soil, so only really thrives on steep inclines where it rains a lot but the water can run off. As a consequence, I assume like rice in paddy fields, it has been impossible to industrialise, as there is no mechanised contraption that can simultaneously handle the terrain and harvest the plants.
Because of this, tea plantations are totally silent and peaceful. There is no sound of machinery, and the only thing that you can really hear, is the sound of the wind in the leaves, the wildlife, and the women singing and chatting in the fields. Strangely enough, walking through, it doesn't smell of anything. Only when it is chopped and dried does tea smell like tea.
Babu described life on the plantations as simple but happy and sociable. Everybody who worked there loved it and couldn't imagine wanting to do anything else, and as they all had an equal stake in the wellbeing of the estate, there was a very lively and enthusiastic community spirit.
I have to say, seeing and hearing all this as we walked down, if i had to work the earth somewhere in the world, it would be here. It was like agricultural heaven, a farmer's utopia. The place was stunningly beautiful, immaculately manicured and more peaceful and serene than i had ever imagined. If i hadn't seen it with my own eyes i don't know if i'd have believed it. Even now, i considered the possibility that it was some sort of anti-coffee propaganda and that the entire site was little more than an Indian Potemkin village.
We walked past some of the workers' houses and a school, and even they were pretty. It was like wandering through an Asian version of Hobbitton.
We reached the processing factory at the bottom of the valley, which, although it wasn't the prettiest building in

the world, could be forgiven its aesthetic shortcomings for pumping out the most amazing smell from its chimneys.

We drank sweet, frothy, milky tea at a stall and was easily the best i have ever tasted. Bizarre really, because this particular estate was one of the biggest suppliers to Tetleys, which in comparison, tastes like shit.
On the way back to Munnar, Babu told me of a friend of his in Kumily, my next destination, who could put me up in his hostel and take me on a trek through the jungle to see the local wildlife. He gave me the name of the hostel and told me he would ring ahead and have his friend pick me up from the bus-stop. Normally i am instantly suspicious of this kind of offer, but i was in such a good mood after such a great morning that i agreed. If his his trek up the mountain and through the tea estate was anything to go by, i would assume his mate's trek through the jungle would be equally beautiful and interesting.