Tea processing in Munnar

Posted on May 2, 2014 by Ginger

I’m sure you’ve been wondering how tea gets from those lush green mountainsides into your teabag in your steaming and delicious cup of tea. Well, wonder no more. You have questions, I have answers. I even have answers to questions you didn’t know you had.

First, the tea is picked. At a distance, you might hardly even notice the pickers in the, er, fields? of tea.

The pickers are literally trimming the “tiny little tea leaves” from the growing edges of the plants, and they make their circuit of the plantation every ten days or so. Which completely explains why the landscape has that magical and completely groomed look.

The implement used for this task is a large set of shears with a collection box attached.

After the tea leaves are clipped and collected, they are brought to the factory.

I don’t really understand the tea factory. Yes, I was there. Yes, I took pictures. Yes, I listened to the explanations. But I was so fascinated by the antequated beauty of the machinery and the timelessness of the process that I couldn’t take in the words. So here’s what I know, and if words fail me from time to time, I hope you will enjoy the pictures of what I saw.

Freshly picked tea leaves are brought first to a room where they are spread out in large troughs to wither, which is one of perhaps many stages of different kinds of drying.

After the leaves are withered enough, they are rolled, which causes them to lose their green color and become a kind of coppery red. I think this solid old “Britannia” machine is for rolling.

Then the tea leaves are subjected to a process of “fermentation,” the term used for oxidation. The tea must be kept cool for this process. It is therefore spread out on a “bacteria free” cement floor. Fermentation takes maybe two to three hours. At the end of this time the tea begins to smell like tea. (Which is delicious!)

The tea is then further dried, removing its remaining moisture to stop the fermentation process. The speed of the drying machine is the critical component that determines the production rate of the factory.

After drying, the tea is sifted through a machine with different size meshes that extract any remaining fibers and grade the tea according to size (the smallest leaves are the best).

All of the output of this factory is earmarked for Saudi Arabia. Except, that is, for the small amount they sell to tourists right at the factory either in bulk or in a refreshing cup of tea.

The backwaters of Kerala – at work

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Ginger

Still moored by the small village, we woke the next morning around dawn. The houseboat that had been moored next to us on the right was already gone, and the village was full of activity. To our left, two people prepared to go out fishing. A boy and his grandmother, I thought at the time, but it could equally well have been his mother.

They are late. All those dots in the lake in the background are fishing boats, already out there and fishing. The sun is barely up.

Meanwhile, the mother is taking care of the laundry, and colorful clothing blossoms on the line.

To our right, across the space where our neighbor houseboat used to be, some men have begun working, unloading a boatload of–muck from some canal or riverway they were trying to clear? fill for some swampy area they were trying to turn into a field? or both? They have exquisite balance, walking along the rail of the boat and then across narrow boards to the shore.

I like the cooperative work of these men, and of the fishermen in Varkala, and I feel sad for the woman washing her lonely laundry.

But our crew has been hard at work too, and it’s time for us to leave. A delicious and plentiful breakfast awaits us as we head out across the lake where the fishermen are still hard at work, and back down the waterways to Alappuzha.

The backwaters of Kerala – the people

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Ginger

In the stunning green world of Kerala’s backwaters, the people with their bright homes and clothing stand out like jewels–especially the women. We couldn’t make real contact, motoring by on our houseboat, but we could watch them on their way from, well, somewhere to somewhere else, threading the narrow path between canal and rice paddy.

Or going by boat…

…or maybe just preparing to go by boat…

…or hanging out by their houses.

From our lazy houseboat perspective, even the buildings themselves clustered in their small villages or strung out along the canal have a certain charm.

sm DSC00290 When we docked near a village for the night, Dan and I went out for a walk. On land. Something a little different. And here, as elsewhere in Kerala, I was approached by children. Elsewhere in India, they are likely to be beggars. But not in Kerala. Kerala has virtually no beggars, and certainly not the children. What these children wanted was simply to make my acquaintance, and maybe practice a little English.

“Hello,” they say.

I smile–I can’t help it!–and they smile back. “How are you?” they ask.

“I’m fine,” I reply. “How are you?”

“I am fine. What’s your name?”

So I tell them, and I learn theirs, and sometimes we get as far as, “How old are you?” (That would be me asking them, not the other way around. They probably don’t know numbers bigger than, say, ten.)

“May I take your picture?” I might ask, or they might ask it, in words or in gestures, these bright, shining children. “Please, take my picture.”

So I do.

The backwaters of Kerala

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Ginger

I don’t remember when I first heard about Kerala. It was years ago. I learned that it had the highest literacy rate of all Indian states–over 90% for both men and women–and the greatest religious diversity and tolerance, with large minority populations of Moslems and Christians. There had also been, I learned, a significant Jewish presence in Kerala from the destruction of the second temple until well into the twentieth century–and that all minorities lived in peace in Kerala. For years I wanted to visit a state in India with such impressive diversity, education, and tolerance.

Also, I knew that Kerala has been a center of the spice trade for thousands of years and is also famous for its tea. The best black peppercorns–Tellicherry peppers–come from Kerala. However, when I mention Kerala to friends and acquaintances in the USA, if they’d heard of Kerala at all, they did not mention any of these things. What they were curious about was:

Were Dan and I going to stay on a houseboat?

I’d never heard of such a thing, but research revealed that traveling the backwaters of Kerala in a houseboat was, in fact, the number one tourist attraction in Kerala. Who knew?!

You just don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve plied the miles of intertwined canals and rivers and lakes in a boat woven of wicker. And Alappuzha, the center of this remarkable tourist attraction, is filled with dozens, if not hundreds, of such houseboats, all waiting to take you on this unforgettable excursion.

As for us, well, if we were going to take this trip, we wanted a certain amount of luxury. Air conditioning, the ability to close up against mosquitoes, and a private bathroom were requirements. The Pickadly Royal Suite Honeymoon Luxury Houseboat filled the bill–and more besides. Forget the mere private bathroom. We had an entire dedicated private houseboat, complete with a full-time crew of three–a captain, an engineer, and a chef. The food was some of the best we had in Kerala, where all the food was phenomenal. We departed the dock in Alappuzha promptly at noon and almost immediately entered an enchanted world.

We, and several dozen other houseboats that all offered overnight trips that depart the dock promptly at noon.

Do not confuse these whimsical yet luxurious vessels with the houseboats that started this whole craze years ago, the ones on which some of the residents of this enchanting region actually live.

Actually, many types of boats ply these waters.

The scenery is idyllic.

Next post: More about the people.

Varkala – the endless sea

Posted on April 7, 2014 by Ginger

I ended my trip but began the Indian blog posts, with Varanasi. Time to backtrack now, almost to the beginning. The first stop on the trip was in Kerala–Thiruvananthapuram (a name that I am inordinately fond of, having gone to great lengths to memorize it, but you can call it Trivandrum for short). I’m going to skip Thiruvananthapuram, but I may backtrack here later; I have some pretty neat pictures of a wonderful wooden palace two hours deep into Tamil Nadu but still part of Kerala. But somehow I sense you’re probably pretty tired of architectural wonders.

So let’s skip that for now. Let’s go to the beach.

We arrived early in Varkala, about 10:30 in the morning. We understood that our room would probably not be ready. This was fine. We were happy just to sit near the ocean with nothing to do.

We did not expect to find a serious game of tug-of-war going on just on the other side of our hotel. Wonderful, I thought, that the hotel was organizing games for the guests. But… there was something odd about this particular game. For one thing, where were the women? The children?

Come to that, where were the tourists?

This was no game. This was, it turned out, the local fishermen earning their daily keep. There were two heavy ropes, each being pulled by some ten or twelve men.

As the rope came in, the group on the rock wall moved closer and closer to the one on the beach.

They coiled the rope behind them. At the end of the rope was the end of a very large net, and this too they gathered behind them.

Now both groups, close together, pulled in earnest.

A man riding a kind of a–surfboard?–helped guide in the far edge of the net.

As the net was pulled in, the catch became visible–an abundance of small silver fish.

The fishermen scooped up most of the fish into a basket.

There ensued a heated discussion with a man who, like us tourists, had been only a bystander until this moment. Now emotions ran high.

You didn’t have to speak Malayam to understand that a negotiation was in process. The buyer turned in disgust to leave. One of the fishermen ran after him. More discussion, calmer this time. A price was agreed. Two men took the basket, following the buyer off the beach. The fishermen divided up their gear and the remaining fish. The catch of the day had been disposed of.

Dan and I checked into our room and then went for a walk along the beach. If they could photoshop reality, they would make it look something like this.

The sun, as it usually does, set.

We stopped along the way for a drink (a surprisingly good mojito).

And then later, we had dinner by candlelight on the beach.

Khajuraho, part 3

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Ginger

More delicious eye candy from Khajuraho!

I’m pretty sure that the next one is a deity, dancing. But who?

And finally, this beautiful couple epitomizes for me everything I love about these carvings. I like to think they are gods–perhaps Shiva and Parvathi–but anyhow, they seem to be someone important. And they love each other, that’s clear. Look how his hand gently touches her breast, how hers rests lightly on his shoulder. They have so much personality, so much liveliness. Such exquisite detailing that it’s hard to believe they are just two of ten thousand adorning these temples. Hard to believe they are a thousand years old and not just created yesterday. Hard to believe they are made out of stone.

Khajuraho, part 2

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Ginger

I wish I could share these photographs with you in a very large size. It’s impractical in a blog format–some folks have different bandwidths–but contact me if you’re interested.

Here are some details from another temple.

I love how the central figures in these compositions are flanked on either side by sinuous women displaying their curves.

Below you can see the texture of the wall as a whole, and then a closer look at the detail.

Finally, a god and goddess… I think these may be Shiva and Parvathi.

More great Khajuraho images are still on the way!

Khajuraho, part 1

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Ginger

The temples of Khajuraho were built during the Chandella dynasty, which lasted from about 950 until about 1050 A.D. That is, this stunning group of monuments, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is about a thousand years old. There are some twenty main structures and more smaller ones.

For what might be the first time since I started writing this blog, I am at a loss to know how to present this material. I am at a loss even to tell you whether what we saw the day we were in Khajuraho was architecture…or sculpture…or poetry.

The beauty of these temples works at every level of detail. To show you what I mean, I am going to zoom in on a couple of the rounded cylindrical forms that make up the walls of this temple. Look for a woman bent backwards to examine the sole of her foot. In the first picture, she is on the right-hand column in the middle row of figures.

Now look at the figures all around her. They are all exquisitely detailed, all different, all perfect. Now imagine this kind of sculpture covering the entire building–covering twenty entire buildings. The place is simply, literally breathtaking.

Here I need to insert a word about the subject matter of the sculptures. There are gods. There are animals. There are mythical creatures. But most of all there are people. The people are engaged in what UNESCO is pleased to call “all aspects of life.” Which, that is to say, includes rather explicit portrayals of sex in permutations that might occasionally surprise even an adult. However, the sculptures are not about sex. They are (according to UNESCO) about the Tantric doctrine in which the mating of the male principle (form and potential) and female principle (energy) creates the entire world. I have, after some thought, not included explicit subject matter in this blog. The statues are, every one of them, gorgeous. I want all readers to feel comfortable about looking at what I post here.

Ready? Let’s get started with one of the earlier temples…

What I love about this picture is the procession of people, some on horseback, that marches along the bottom. But the whole building is full of interesting details.

The last statue is inside the temple. Isn’t she lovely? And after a thousand years you can still count each individual bead in her necklace.

Varanasi – river, early morning

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Ginger

This series of posts about Varanasi has been long–but the city is unique, and no series of posts however long can fully do justice to the immensity of it. And so the time comes to conclude and move on. And what better way to do this than to post a series of pictures that to my mind show the beauty of the city bathed in splendid early morning light and dancing with the river!

Happy memories!

Varanasi – the Nepali temple

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Ginger

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I’ve posted anything here. Time flies! Time to get busy!

The Nepali temple in Varanasi could be the single most unique spot in a city that is arguably composed entirely of unique spots. But–Nepal? Really?

Yes!

There is evidence to suggest that the property was actually transferred by the ruler of Varanashi–then called Kashi–to the Nepalese king back in 1843. And the temple itself is a replica of the famous Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu.

Look at the workmanship in the wood carving!

Many of the other details are also quite charming.

And from the temple’s platform, we had a unique perspective of the city’s quotidian life: visitors walking along the ghats; a tired pilgrim stopping for a rest; an Indian tour group, perhaps a family.

G. S. Kenney Author

Thousands of words, millions of words' worth of pictures

Tag Archives: photographs

Tea processing in Munnar

The backwaters of Kerala – at work

The backwaters of Kerala – the people

The backwaters of Kerala

Varkala – the endless sea

Khajuraho, part 3

Khajuraho, part 2

Khajuraho, part 1

Varanasi – river, early morning

Varanasi – the Nepali temple

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