2 Days in Munnar, Munnar, India

Today, we moved up into the welcome cooler temperatures of the Uplands and the hill stations of Munnar – prettily clothed in neat geometric blocks of acre upon acre of bright green tea plantations.

The tea industry in India began with 42,000 seedlings germinated from a consignment of 80,000 seeds procured from China. 2000 were planted in the hill districts of South India, and 20,000 each in the hill districts in Kumaon in North India and Upper Assam on the Northeast frontier. These days, the Chinese strain is used to produce Darjeeling tea and the remainder of the tea in India is the indigenous Assam tea.

A visit to the Lockhart Tea Factory is like taking a step back in time. It is one of the original tea factories dating back to 1879 and operates as a live museum still making tea today in just the same way as it was done all those years ago. It was first established by the British East India Company and then by Harrisons Malayalam Limited.

Producing tea is a highly labour intensive process. Fine-leaf tea is hand plucked. The majority of the workforce (circa 80%) are women because their fingers tend to be more nimble than men’s. Hand shears are used on mountain slopes and in other areas where tractor-mounted machines cannot go. A skilled worker using hand shears can harvest between 60 to 100 kg of tea per day, whereas machines cut between 1,000 and 2,000 kg.  ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).