Tea Estate

Today, Monday September 10 a group went to the Glen Morgan Tea Estate. The journey of 25 km took almost 2 hours by bus. The reason for the slow trip is that there are many potholes in the road. Most of the potholes have potholes of their own. We drove neither on the right nor the left of the road. We drove on what is left of the road after the monsoons. Very little, in fact.

Once we arrived at the Glen Morgan Estate we were royally treated by the owners. They have only one daughter and she was a student at Hebron school several years ago. She is now married and we heard all about her wedding almost 2 years ago. After a cold drink of 7 Up we went to visit the tea factory.

There was no tea being dried at this time. The manager explained the process of partially drying the tea with large fans until 50 % of the moisture is removed from the leaves. If the tea is for "green" tea then the semi-dried leaves go to one side of the factory. If the leaves are for "black" tea then the leaves go to the other side of the factory. The leaves are then cut, dried, sorted and cut some more. Finally the tea is ready to be packages into tea bags. This particular plant does only green and black tea for tea bags - "dipping" tea. The Estate owners have several other factories which produce other kinds of tea. We also saw the "tasting" room where the tea leaves are made into tea and tasted to see whether or not the product is marketable.

After the tour we went back to the house and saw the area that had been constructed with bamboo poles and a thatched roof for the wedding reception in December 2005. The wedding was held out of doors and when the sun went down the temperature fell to -4 C. They had several fire pits going to keep the guests warm as well as B-B-Q's for the food.

Lunch was served under the awning in front of the house with home made carrot soup, garlic bread, rice, bean curry, curd, dhal, roti, salad, omelette on toast, and pudding for dessert. The servants were waiting on us - piling our plates whenever there was space. Lunch was prolonged because some of the group had cycled over and were late getting there.

The Estate is at 7000 feet above sea level.


We had of course the same bumpy bus ride back to school on the national highway - pictures tell the tale.