dedicated to all the tea lovers..

while we were in kaziranga, we (husband and i) got a wonderful chance to visit a tea estate and a tea processing plant....it was big and the smell of roasting tea leaves was intoxicating!
unfortunately we weren't allowed to click too many pictures...especially of the machinery and the CTC processes.....but i did et permission to click some pictures of the manual tea sorting and we managed to taste tea in the tea tasting room!!! yayaya!!! what an experience it was.....

 manual sorting of tea

 equipment for proper tea tasting = baba adam ke zamane ke cup, containers, timer, kettle

 baba adam ka zamana...i love that sentence...very commonly spoken in my house...very punjabi north indian

 the really old timer...it got stuck and was then shaken to get back on track...hahhaha was used to measure 10 minutes...or was it 5..i forget!

 kettle for boiling water

so the idea is for the tea to brew....how? well boil water separately....pour into a container, put 10 gms of tea in that container and let it sit for 5/10 minutes (i think 5...ten is too long...dunno pls check at your end) and voila you have the perfect cuppa chai...no sugar no milk.....repeat the taste test by adding a little bit of milk...it is also used to test the colour of tea...

ps: if i ever worked in a tea processing plant....i wouln't drink tea again!!! the super strong tea smell made my head spin!!:D