Tea pilgrimage: Avongrove inspection

We were up early enough on the 26th to see the sun rise. It was kind of a peekaboo affair, as the mist of the previous evening hadn't dispersed. The fog wouldn't completely vanish until well into the morning, but as soon as there was some light, the beauty of our surroundings became clear. Stepping out of the Avongrove manager's bungalow is like walking into a Chinese landscape painting. The Chinese tea phrase "clouds and mist" kept occurring to me. As far as the eye could see - to the extent that the mist allowed - nothing was flat, and virtually everything was some shade of green.

There was a lot to do that day, and my wife and I were glad to tag along. SMC hadn't visited Avongrove in some time, so most of the day was essentially an inspection tour with the manager Mr. Subba and SMC.

Avongrove's bungalow and factory, and some of the fields, are high up a ridge, but the fields extend all the way down to a river (if I took a wild guess, I'd say there's a difference of altitude of 1,500 feet.) Going from place to place within the garden, our basic mode of transportation was a four-wheel-drive vehicle. We'd get out and walk when we reached a place of interest, of course. But some parts of the garden can be reached only by narrow, precipitous trails, so we'd leave the jeep far behind. Many of the roads in the garden, to use a term I learned that day, aren't "jeepable". Some of the heavy hauling, in fact, gets done by horses.

In fact, one of the main topics for the inspection was to see the progress of road-building projects toward raising the jeepability quotient.

Just as at Dooars, there were lots of things SMC wanted to see for himself. How were the leaves coming out in various fields? How were the leguminous crops, like an imposing grass they called "Guatemala", coming along where superannuated bushes had been ripped out? How were replantings doing where the soil had had enough time to rest? How were the huge compost piles - Avongrove is organic - progressing? What was the internal temperature of the compost, and what plant matter was going into it? Was the pruning up to snuff? How were the seedlings coming along in the nursery? How was that field doing that was replanted with one clonal variety a couple of years ago?

In the middle of this, there was a delicious lunch at the bungalow featuring vegetables from Mrs. Subba's kitchen garden. We had the first broccoli I'd seen since we arrived in India. I'd been wondering about broccoli's absence in a country where cauliflower seemed to be the national vegetable, so I asked. The answer: broccoli withers fast in a climate as hot as lowland Bengal, so hardly anyone tries to grow it at low altitudes.

/Lew

Reply to
Lewis Perin
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Lewis,

Have you considered putting these travelogues on a web site? You write very well.

Have you told us who SMC is? An Indian manager?

I'm from Calcutta originally, and have visited Darjeeling a number of times (using Darjeeling Mail). Travel overnight was always preferred in non-air-conditioned trains in the Indian heat.

Those Wisdoms are great.. I saw some good ones on roadside signs and painted on the rear of trucks.

Of course, everyone ignores all these pithy sayings...

Reply to
Aloke Prasad

A request: Could you find out from your contacts as to which gardens are used to create the Lipton's Green Label Darjeeling teas? That used to be (and still is) a staple in my household.

Actually, Liptons Green label is pretty good for it's price...

Reply to
Aloke Prasad

My oldest brother was married in India, and he said the most memorable was "Lane Driving is Sane Driving" - particularly as he was in the back seat of a car being driven at about 90mph on a narrow, winding road, when he saw it.

Reply to
Eric Jorgensen

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