December 22, 2024
A two-hour drive from the heat of Kochi brought us to Munnar, a hill station 1600 meters above sea level. With a population of 40,000, Munnar was a tourist destination for honeymooners, hikers, and tea connoisseurs. Dinesh took us to the Shamrock Hotel for overnight accommodation. From our Shamrock balcony, mountains and tea plantations were visible.
Munnar’s downtown market bustled with people. Although I assumed hill stations had limited shopping, I found the town market fascinating. There were various teas, coffees, and spices, like pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom. There were also wooden artifacts, handicrafts, fabrics, aromatic essential oils, homemade chocolate, and more. Stalls lined the streets, offering many things, from rice to pots to utensils. Although many items appealed to us, we had no space for additional purchases in our suitcases. But grabbing one of those fine-smelling coffees was in order. With coffee in hand, we strolled around the stalls offering fruits and vegetables neatly piled up, sweetening the air that was already perfumed by scents of spices and coffee.
A mosque was being renovated, and a Christian church was nearby. Walking, we saw drying sheets spread across open fields. I wondered if the locals would ever switch to using dryers.
A nearby attraction was the Tata Tea Museum, which opened in 2005 (until 2005, the Tata Group owned extensive tea plantations in this region). The exhibits explained the tea-making process and helped us understand what we saw on our field trip.
To harvest the tea plants, women plucked tea leaves into big sacks worn on their backs; supervising the women was always done by men. We watched this operation and attributed this division of roles by gender to historical precedent and/or class. When the sacks were full, the women transported leaves to the plant for size-based sorting. The next step was to remove the leaves’ moisture and then crush them. Further drying by blowing air through the laid-out leaves created oxidation. As leaves dry, their color changes and lighter brown leaves are harvested first for lighter teas. With further drying, the leaves turn darker for stronger teas.
After the museum guides explained the tea-making process, they offered samples of teas from light to darker varieties and provided a history of tea, the world’s most consumed beverage. The tea plant comes from India and China, with three varieties: China, Assam, and Cambodia. Of course, there are hybrids.
The Assam variety was cultivated in the Munnar area. This tea can reach twenty meters in height. It’s smaller after pruning and lasts up to four decades. When grown at elevations near Darjeeling in Assam or Munnar in Kerala, the tea leaves produce a variety of flavors.
I found an interesting description of a legend in the museum of how tea drinking started. The Hindu legend’s origin is attributed to a saintly priest, Bodhidharma. About 1,900 years ago, the eventual founder of Zen Buddhism was in the fifth year of a seven-year sleepless contemplation of the Buddha. Finding himself dangerously close to falling asleep, Bodhidharma snatched some leaves from a nearby bush and chewed them. He was immediately revived. Bodhidharma turned to these leaves, the leaves of a wild tea tree, whenever he again felt drowsy and was thus, according to legend, able to complete his seven years of meditation.
Note: The history of tea plantations in the Munnar area starts in the second half of the nineteenth century. The land was undeveloped until British resident John Daniel Munro came to Munnar in 1857. He thought of creating a plantation in the area and leased hundreds of square kilometers of land from the Poonjar royal family. In 1872, the Scottish Finley Muir Company acquired the local tea plantations. In 1964, the Finley Group collaborated with the Tata Group to form the Tata Finley Group, which became Tata Tea, Ltd. in 1983.
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