OSP: Tea! #4 Tea Time Travel Bug

Destination: Darjeeling

As much as I would love to plan out a trip for each and every special spot where amazing tea is grown and produced, I want to build a realistic, in-depth itinerary and post it within a week of starting this OSP! 🙂 I have decided to build a travel plan around a place that I don’t know at all and which, until recently, has not been super high up on my travel wishlist: India. More specifically Darjeeling, in West Bengal. India is a daunting destination that calls up intense images of mass poverty, almost aggressive begging and overwhelming crowds. Granted, this is not at all based on personal experience and really, from here my expectations can only be pleasantly surpassed. Of course I’ve come to distrust popular media, especially after what I’ve heard other people believe about gorgeous, sunny South Africa. However, it is still a fact that the population of India in 2012 was 1 236 686 700 (yeah, you read that right, 1,23 billion!) and 32,7% of the country is firmly below the poverty line.[1]

My itinerary will consist of a two week travel plan, with day trips, a vague plan of places to see with some detailed info about the places or how to get there… Basically this is exactly how I plan when I travel; transportation and admin stuff very prepared and more of a loose framework of things I want to fit into a spread of days, while still leaving enough time to meander, smell the city (as per Rudyard Kipling’s travel musings) and get lost in the streets. My itinerary is planned around going at the end of March, before monsoon season starts.

Darjeeling train station, Copyrighted to Atomicbre under Creative Commons license

Day 1: Arrive in Kolkata, India
I will land in Kolkata, because I can get less transfers than landing in Bagdogra (the closest airport), and getting to Darjeeling overland is quicker than from Delhi. Also, I get to spend time in two cities! 🙂
In case of delays or tight scheduling and just to decompress from a super long flight, I’ll spend one night in Kolkata before zooming in on Darjeeling. Hostels are roughly ₹800 (Indian rupees) per night (i.e. US$14); I would try to stay in the area of Howrah Train Station, which is where I’m catching a train the next day. The Howrah station is in the North Kolkata area, which is known for it’s old Zamindar buildings and narrow alleyways. Though I might not go looking for these little alleyways quite yet on the first day I arrive, there is another place I would make a beeline for: College Street Bookmarket. A whole street with bookshop after bookshop, in a variety of different language on myriad topics (is what I’ve heard/read); after which I would go to the College Street Coffe House and pore over my purchases (not even kidding, I know I’ll walk away with something).
The first day of ‘take it easy and just take it in’ works well for me, so after College street, I’ll stroll aimlessly for a bit, probably keep an eye out for some sherbet, since late March already sees temperatures as high as 30 Celsius[2] as well as some street food to keep me going. On Scoop Whoop Srishti posted some amazing suggestions of Kolkatan street food to try – those samosas and phuchkas look dangerously delicious! Phuchka: “…In fact, the filling of spiced mashed potatoes dipped in tamarind water or meethe paani (mishti jol) is simply put an explosion of spicy tart, crunch and softness from the potatoes that account for a milieu of happy memories.”[3] I am so ready!

Copyrighted to Mjanich under Creative Commons license

OSP Tea! #2 Weird and wonderful

Now for the interesting tangents… Tea is pretty cheap, as a commodity (according to indexmundi tea has sold for just over US$2 p/kg for the last couple of months), and depending on where you buy your tea, one cup could cost US$0.09![1] What?? Even if you pay US$10 for a 2oz bag of loose leaf tea, which is on the more upscale end, it only comes out to US$0.55.[2]

On the other hand, nothing special ever stays absolutely accessible. One of my first wanderings into the tea world, I had to search out the most expensive tea… and it coincided quite conveniently with the weird and bizarre things people do to set their tea-drinking apart from what may be considered plebian. First-off I do not consider it a special kind of tea experience when there are golden flakes brewed among the tea leaves! That’s just bizarre and says nothing about a love of tea, rather more about a personal lack of authenticity. With that mini rant out of the way… There is a tea that embodies both decadent indulgence as well as adventurous daring! 🙂 This is the kind of beverage that, were I to be blessed by its ingestion, I don’t know whether I would brag about drinking a US$200 cup of it, or to just keep to myself what it is I’ve spent that much cash on… It is o.O panda dung tea.[3]

Photo Credit: 熊.陈美芬.Phan Ly Photography.On/Off via Compfight cc

Unlike the civet coffee where the animal actually eats and poops out the bean, in this case the tea fields are fertilized with panda dung. Actually, that’s not so bad… An Yanshi, the guy whose idea this is, calls it environmental, organic tea in the spirit of recycling and using waste in positive ways. Whatever floats your boat, man 🙂