A TRAVELOGUE: INSIDE DARJEELING

We prioritize collaborating with tea plantations that practice sustainable, organic farming. This involves allowing the tea plants to remain the way Mother Nature intended them to be. This involves playing by her rules.

At a lush tea plantation on the outskirts of Mirik, a misty hill town which is bestrode by the Indian-Nepal border, organic farming isn’t something to be adopted. It’s simply the way things are done. And while there are a myriad of reasons, first and foremost it is because of a philosophical approach to the human-environmental relationship, which is based on respect. There are no chemicals or fertilisers used in their farming process, but instead use what Mother Nature gives them. 

Creating an organic plantation means maintaining one. A key element of staying organic is staying away from poisonous pesticides and fertilisers, which speed up the natural growth of the tea bushes. Synthetic farming is hugely detrimental to Mother Nature. One hard fact about organic tea farming is that it’s not the most profitable way to farm. Organic production may be half that of a synthetic farm, but the soil is not deteriorated for future generations.

If you look at the world, there is a slow movement from synthetic food to organic food. People have had enough of being fed chemicals and enough abuse to Mother Nature. It is time we go back to living as co-inhabitants in this world. And a world moving towards organic farming.

Sustainably grown teas also depend on a dedicated and skilled workforce, and an understanding of their history and the customs of the people who call the tea plantation home. 

A wonderful example are the Gurkha people who have lived in Darjeeling for six generations. Originally Hindu, today the population is a harmonious melting pot of Buddhists and Christians with sprawling monasteries and steeples dotted around Mirik. These people have been living on tea plantations for five generations, with women taking the role as tea pluckers in the field, a millennia-old tradition since tea cultivation began. Handpicking permits tea planters to select the best two-leaves-and-a-bud, and causes no damage to the tea bushes.

These workers live in colourful blue, yellow, green-painted houses, all spotlessly clean with vegetable gardens and potted plants serving as decorative stoops. Always, there is a nearby cow, which each worker owns to provide milk and also fertilizer for organic compost, often donated by the plantations to ensure milk is available for the children and the surplus can be sold for income. The Gurkha people rely little on outside influence, seldom leaving the remote region. They grow their own food, sing, dance in the evenings.

Beyond the remarkable flavours in the teacup, tea is a journey and a discovery of a wonderful heritage and tradition, an experience like no other that will bring people back, time and again, in search of the intangible qualities of TWG Tea.