It's a long and bumpy ride up into the mountains known as the Western Ghats. We leave the trop,ics of Cochi behind, but are heading into some rain. Turns out that some tropical typhoon has come in near Chennai and is now moving overland and into the Arabian Sea. This is the same area that hit a couple of months earlier with devastating floods and mudslides, but it's tamer this time around, although by the time we reach the remotish hotel, nestled between the tea plantations and forested hills, sheets of rain are coming down. The afternoon is spent in the room watching the trees sway wildly, the rain cascading from the skies. By evening the rain has let up and we enjoy a wonderful dinner in hotel in the middle of the trees.
The sun greets us the next day, and with a bit of information from the hotel staff, we walk down the patchy road to look for the famed views over the tea plantations that cover the hillsides here. We reach a point where we follow a smaller track into a plantation for even better views, then eventually back track to the hotel, this time continuing in the opposite direction to see what we can find there. We definitely strike gold.
Tea pickers dot the nearby hills, and as we navigate the track, we figure a way to get closer and see more of what is going on. Our timing turns out to be perfect. The workers are fanned out over the hill, clipping with an implement that is something like hedge-clippers with an attached box. The clipped leaves fall directly into this box and are then dumped out onto a tarp that each cutter has with her(most are women). They appear to be just about finishing up their clipping for the morning/day, and begin to tie up their bundles and head down hill to the track we're on. Each sits down on her now open tarp and begins sifting through what she's picked, removing some stems, throwing out some weeds and the odd flower. She lightly tosses the leaves while doing this sorting. The manager lady comes barreling through the line of pickers, barking out orders we don't understand, but the pickers don't seem to pay her any heed. A short while later the pickers line up to have their bundles weighed, then dump their leaves in common piles, where another bunch begins stuffing the mesh bags with the leaves. Meanwhile the women collect their bags, their clippers, and walk away down the hillside. Had we come thirty minutes later, we would have missed the whole thing!
Photos and video of the tea picking and hillside views of the patchwork of tea:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RKJ2QhgHw8y7YeRA8
The sun greets us the next day, and with a bit of information from the hotel staff, we walk down the patchy road to look for the famed views over the tea plantations that cover the hillsides here. We reach a point where we follow a smaller track into a plantation for even better views, then eventually back track to the hotel, this time continuing in the opposite direction to see what we can find there. We definitely strike gold.
Tea pickers dot the nearby hills, and as we navigate the track, we figure a way to get closer and see more of what is going on. Our timing turns out to be perfect. The workers are fanned out over the hill, clipping with an implement that is something like hedge-clippers with an attached box. The clipped leaves fall directly into this box and are then dumped out onto a tarp that each cutter has with her(most are women). They appear to be just about finishing up their clipping for the morning/day, and begin to tie up their bundles and head down hill to the track we're on. Each sits down on her now open tarp and begins sifting through what she's picked, removing some stems, throwing out some weeds and the odd flower. She lightly tosses the leaves while doing this sorting. The manager lady comes barreling through the line of pickers, barking out orders we don't understand, but the pickers don't seem to pay her any heed. A short while later the pickers line up to have their bundles weighed, then dump their leaves in common piles, where another bunch begins stuffing the mesh bags with the leaves. Meanwhile the women collect their bags, their clippers, and walk away down the hillside. Had we come thirty minutes later, we would have missed the whole thing!
Photos and video of the tea picking and hillside views of the patchwork of tea:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RKJ2QhgHw8y7YeRA8
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