We woke up this morning to the first sunshine we've seen in two days. Nice to see what this place looks like without the misty clouds.
A view up the reservoir from the bungalow
One of the boats that cross the reservoir.
A tea processing plant seen from across the reservoir. They all tend to look like this
After breakfast we were driven to the Dilmah tea processing plant across the reservoir. The dam on one end is a weird place to cross. The water in the reservoir is quite high, and on the other side of the dam is a very deep chasm. The road to the plant became increasingly awful. On one side was a rather deep ditch, then the unpaved, potholed road, then a rise of the mountain. It turns out our bungalow is at 4000 ft. The ride up the hill brought us to at least 5000 ft or higher. Once the driver had dropped us off he said he had to get someone else, and he turned around for another round trip up and down that awful road. The tour was to start at 9:30, we got dropped off around 8:30, but the wait was fascinating.
The women are the tea pickers; the men do the gardening. These women were coming back from a morning picking session. They get 7 rupees a day if they pick 18 kg of tea.
A view of the Dilmah processing plant.
A lot of the processing is done the old fashioned way. The tea is roasted by a wooden fire.
The tea workers are, for the most part, Indian Tamils. This tea processing place is owned by a Sri Lankan family. Other plants are owned by Indians and Sri Lankans. Attitudes between the management and the workers is a bit odd. While we were waiting, the man, a Sri Lankan, who ultimately led the tour, asked us if we wanted to see a shed that had herbs in it. When we said yes, he called to a Tamil worker who ran over to open the shed up. It was uncomfortable, to say the least.
Women in a field picking tea
A man sharpening his sickle which he was using to cut grass.
This woman is picking tea. She uses the stick to keep the top of the plants evenly trimmed
The tour began when an English couple and a group of 6 Norwegians made it up the hill. I love tea and drink it every morning. But it was a real surprise when I realized how little I knew about how it was processed.
Women go to this area to get their bags of tea leaves weighed.
Once weighed the leaves are dumped into these plastic containers
The containers are spread out on this drying rack. Warm air is run underneath them. They dry warm for a couple of hours, then cool for another hour.
The partially dried leaves are sent down this shoot. Heavier sticks, small stones, and other refuse, goes into the side (it slips through a mesh underneath the leaves). The remaining leaves drop into another container.
The leaves are twisted and eventually cut into bits. The cutter is shown above.
The cut pieces are laid on onto a table. They are dry, but they haven't been roasted yet. At this point the tea ferments. It has to be kept at a high humidity and with temperatures between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. After the fermentation, the leaves are baked at 120° C.
After the leaves are baked, they are sent through this sorting machine. Here the tea gets graded. The two grades we were shown (and later tasted) were BOP and BOPF. The F was for finer grind.
Once the process is finished the tea is placed in these bags which weighed about 40 kg. The final product is only about 32% of the original weight of the leaves when picked. The drying, cleaning, sorting, and everything else, reduces the weight to the final product. 3 kg from every load gets sent to Colombo where it is graded officially and auctioned off to various buyers around the world. Dilmah gets told to whom their bags will be sent.
We had a lovely lunch on the veranda. After our lunch we went on a 6 km nature hike. We began with beautiful weather, but it managed to rain on us at least three times while we were walking. We saw several birds, deer hoof prints, and, of course, lots of tea plants.
Me standing next to tea plants. Their main stems covered in lichens.
We spotted many birds
The official tea picking should be only the top three leaves. Pruning should be all the light colored ones. The ladies we saw at Dilmah were definitely pruning (although it all went for tea.)
More tea pickers we spotted on our hike
This bird is sitting on a stick that will become a tree. Kind of hard to believe the stick can generate a whole tree, but we're not in California anymore.
Several strange bits about our hike. We definitely went up hill more than down hill. How is this possible? The weather changed from sunny to rainy at least 3 times.
Living in the tropics has some good features: frogs on your front porch and in your swimming pool, chirping geckos. And many bad features: 1 inch black and yellow wasps (honeybees?), bees that attack you if you make noise, 3 inch long black flying bugs, in fact, bugs in general. But we found the worst of them all. When we were at the tea processing plant, we stood on some grass. The tour leader suggested we watch out for leeches. On our hike, we found the leeches. They are about 1 inch long and hang around grass and puddles on the trail. For reasons beyond my understanding, they really liked my running shoes. YUK. Every few meters, we stop and pull them off our socks and shoes. YUK. I guess I'm not a leech fan.
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