Makaibari tea estate

About halway from bagdogra airport to darjeeling, makaibari tea estate clings to the steep slopes of the himalayan foothills. The chief of admin and all round nice chap, nayan, booked us in with a local family to stay two nights. We were shown round the plantations where the tea picking ladies worked, carrying their heavy baskets and skillfully plucking the very finest buds and new leaves for the first flush of the season. Our guide dawa was very friendly and informative and told us that now is the time for the first pick of the season and for fine darjeeling teas the ladies only pick the very freshest of leaves. Anything older is left alone, unlike in chinese plantations where the whole bush is plucked bare. I suffered phase two of my delhi belly mid tour and had to leave niki who had a lot of fun picking leaves for herself and chatting to dawa and the ladies. I rejoined later hoping for some lunch and tea tasting only to be led further down the steep slopes by dawa and back up an almost impassable vertical forest a good 200m climb. I had already done this once before when i had to embarrassingly leave niki and dawa and run for the hills with my buttocks clenched. At the end of the climb i was a quivering mess and took myself off to bed to sleep it off. I feel ill even further during the night and was gutted not to make the factory tour to see the process in action. Niki has some good pics of all the machinery which will no doubt appear on farcebook some time soon. I felt for poor hema our host who was very concerned about me being sick. She must have thought it was her food regardless of how many times i reassured her i had been sick for days. She made a conscious effort to tell us that their water was boiled, even during one meal she gave us glasses of it piping hot as though it had come straight out of a kettle.They were such a sweet family and so wanted to be the perfect guests for us awkward westerners.

I managed to haul myself out of bed for most important part... The tasting. We tried green tea, white tea, first flush, silver tips and more. The harsher raw leaved teas didnt really appease my palate but the white tea and super exclusive silver tips really hit the spot. We made a couple of purchases, said our goodbyes and we were then on our way to what inspired us to make the trip up here, the darjeeling train...