Darjeeling Makaibari Tea at Ambuja Realty luxury resort

Calcutta: Hospitality major Ambuja Realty has joined hands with Makaibari, the oldest tea estate in the world, to set up a luxury resort in Darjeeling.

Tea gardens in Darjeeling usually have their own tourism ventures — modest initiatives with four to five rooms inside bungalows.

“We have finally decided on our partner for tea tourism. We could not have found a better partner than Makaibari, which is globally renowned for its tea. Now we will decide on the scale of the project and the investments involved along with the nature of the partnership,” said Harsh Neotia, chairman of Ambuja Realty.

The resort could get the Radisson tag depending on the outcome of the agreement between Carlson Hotels Worldwide, which owns the brand, and Ambuja Realty. The pact will be reviewed next month.

The project comes at a time when the Bengal government is finding it hard to get partners to promote tea tourism in state-owned estates, such as Hilla and Mahua. Both the estates belong to the West Bengal Tea Development Corporation.

To develop an integrated tea tourism circuit in Bengal, the Union tourism ministry had initially granted Rs 7.6 crore. It was, however, slashed to Rs 3.89 crore.

The Ambuja Realty project will showcase the history of Makaibari, which goes way back to 1859, and focus on tea-related activities such as factory visits, tea facial and spa, tea cuisine, tea tasting and plucking. It will also have a tea museum and crafts centre.

Around 60 per cent of an estate is used for cultivation. Ambuja Realty will acquire 24 acres, allowed under the state law for the utilisation of land in gardens.

As a part of budget tourism, Makaibari now lets out refurbished worker cottages to visitors.

Of the 86 gardens in Darjeeling spread over 19,000 hectares, Glenbury, Gleburn, Tata Tea and Ambootia have started their tourism ventures.

McLeod Russel India Limited has also developed a sprawling tea heritage property at its Adabari estate in the Balipara division of Assam. The Goodricke group has some facilities on a smaller scale at some of its estates.

Previously, foreign tourists made up around 80 per cent of tea tourism traffic. Now the ratio of foreign to domestic tourists has become 60:40.

However, tea tourism is still niche activity, with cottage tariffs ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 35,000 per day. There are additional charges for nature activities such as rafting, camping and walks.

Source: The Telegraph

Darjeeling Tea article by Matt Gross

DARJEELING, India: The Himalayas rose almost out of nowhere. One minute the Maruti Suzuki hatchback was cruising the humid plains of West Bengal, palm trees and clouds obscuring the hills to come; the next it was navigating a decrepit road that squiggled up through forests of cypress and bamboo. The taxi wheezed with the strain of the slopes.

For an hour or more, as we climbed ever higher, all I saw was jungle with hardly a village to break the anxious monotony. Finally, around 1,200 meters, or 4,000 feet, the foliage opened just enough to allow a more expansive view. From the edge of the road, the hills flowed up and down and back up, covered with low, flat-topped bushes. Tiny dots marched among the bushes and along the dirt tracks that zigzagged up the hillsides - workers plucking leaves from Camellia sinensis, the tea bushes of Darjeeling.

Flying to a remote corner of India and braving the long drive into the Himalayas may seem like an awful lot of effort for a good cup of tea, but Darjeeling tea isn't simply good. It's about the best in the world, fetching record prices at auctions in Calcutta and Shanghai.

In fact, Darjeeling is so synonymous with high-quality black tea that few non-connoisseurs realize it's not one beverage but many: 87 tea estates operate in the Darjeeling district, a region that sprawls across several towns (including its namesake) in a mountainous corner of India between Nepal and Bhutan, with Tibet not far to the north.

Each has its own approach to growing tea, and in a nod to increasingly savvy and adventurous consumers, a few have converted bungalows into tourist lodging, while others are accepting day visitors keen to learn the production process, compare styles and improve their palates.

I set out to travel from estate to estate last March during the "first flush" harvest, said to produce the most delicate, flavorful leaves. (The second flush, in May and June, is really just as good.)

My first stop was Makaibari, an estate just south of the town of Kurseong, around 1,500 meters above sea level. Founded by G.C. Banerjee in the 1840s, during the region's first great wave of tea cultivation, Makaibari remains a family operation, run by Banerjee's great-grandson Swaraj - better known as Rajah. Rajah is a Darjeeling legend: He's arguably done more for Darjeeling tea than anyone else in the district. In 1988, he took the estate organic; four years later, it was fully biodynamic, the first in the world.

Today, it produces the most expensive brew in Darjeeling, a "muscatel" that sold for 50,000 rupees a kilogram (about $555 a pound) at auction in Beijing last year. You won't often spot his logo on grocery store shelves, but you'll find his leaves in boxes marked Tazo and Whole Foods.

After checking into one of the six no-frills bungalows he has erected for tourists, I met Banerjee at the Makaibari factory (opened in 1859). What, he asked, did I hope to accomplish at Makaibari?

"Well," I said, "I guess I'd like to see how tea is made."

"Ha! You've come to the wrong place for that," Banerjee declared with an eager grin. "This is the place to see how tea is enjoyed!" Then he poured me a cup - bright but mellow, with a faint fruity sweetness that lingered on my tongue. It was to be the first of many perfect cups.

Enjoying tea at Makaibari was an involved business. At 7:30 every morning, Mr. Lama, the grandfatherly caretaker, would present me with a cup of fresh, hot "bed tea," which I'd sip groggily before leaving my woolen blankets for the chilly mountain air. At breakfast in the glassed-in common room, more tea, after which I'd go to the factory. On one side of the road were the tea bushes. On the other, the prayer flags of a Buddhist monastery fluttered in the Himalayan breeze. Children on their way to school would shout "Hello!" while their parents, many of them Makaibari employees, would put their palms together and quietly say, "Namaste."

In Makaibari's offices, I'd have a cup while waiting for Banerjee to arrive. After making his entrance, Banerjee would expound on everything from Rudolf Steiner's biodynamic farming theories to the fall of Atlantis to his youth on Carnaby Street in London, where he made a fortune before retreating to Darjeeling to grow tea.

Eventually, we'd move into the tasting room, where Banerjee would inspect the day's production. This was "SFTGFOP," the labels noted: super-fine tippy golden flowery orange pekoe, the healthy, unbroken leaves from the very top of the bush. Earlier, an assistant had weighed out precisely two grams from several batches, steeped them in nearly boiling water for five minutes, and strained the tea into white ceramic bowls.

As with wine, tasting tea is no simple process of gulping and grading. Banerjee first inspected the infused leaves for color and nose, and only then sipped from each bowl, inhaling sharply to oxidate the liquid and release its flavors, and sloshing it loudly around his mouth before spitting it into a nearby tub. Then, with hardly a moment's hesitation, he'd move on to the next bowl.

"Taste those two," Banerjee ordered the first day, "and tell me which you prefer." I did as he said. Both had the gentle floral aroma typical of first-flush Darjeelings, but the second had a pronounced strength and astringency that appealed to me, even though I knew that Darjeeling growers try for subtlety over punch. I told him my decision.

"Bah!" he said after resampling them. "That one only has undertones of peach. The first one has peach flavors and is much more complex. It's far superior!"

I blushed - I had much to learn. And for the next few days, I studied hard. First, I followed the tea pickers - mostly ethnic Nepali women - into the fields. "Dui path, ek suiro" was what they plucked - "two leaves, a bud" - slowly transforming each bush from bright yellowish green to the deep sheen of the older leaves.

In the factory, massive steel machines were turning the harvest into drinkable tea by the "orthodox" method. After 16 to 20 hours in withering troughs that remove much of their moisture, the fresh leaves go into rollers that curl them into precise formations once achieved only by hand. Then comes the fermentation, during which the tea develops its flavor, becoming a half-fermented oolong or a fully fermented black tea. Next the tea is fired - baked - to stop the fermentation, and the leaves are sorted, graded, packed and sent to the tasting room for Banerjee's approval.

After exploring Makaibari's hundreds of hectares of wilderness, I moved on to Glenburn. This century-old planter's house, meticulously restored, stood on the edge of a plateau. The suites were vast, kitted out in teak club chairs and four-poster beds that evoked the Raj. The man responsible for Glenburn's tea was Sanjay Sharma, 33. As estate manager, he has tried to push the production in new directions, and he asserted that Glenburn now ranked No. 17 in the district. Sharma's first-flush teas had that wonderful flowery scent and a long, lingering aftertaste, with just a hint of bite.

Alas, Glenburn was booked, so I went on to Goomtee, a resort recommended by Nathmull's, the best tea shop in Darjeeling. In terms of luxury, Goomtee stood somewhere between Makaibari and Glenburn. The comfy planter's house recalled 1950 rather than 1850, with huge rooms and a garden of azaleas, and since the owners of the estate were vegetarians, so were the guests - myself and four Japanese women. After checking in, I followed them and their translator to the fields.

And I began to fade. I was about to drop off entirely when an assistant brought in a full tea service and poured us each a cup. I sipped. This is what they mean by "brisk," a bright flavor that fills your mouth and wakes you up.

I soon learned more about briskness, when I set off one morning for Muscatel Valley, Goomtee's organic fields. If Makaibari had been wild and Glenburn a fantasyland, then Muscatel Valley was positively prehistoric, with massive stone outcroppings amid lonely fields of tea bushes.

When I returned to my room, I flopped down in exhaustion. How, I wondered, could these professionals differentiate among the infinitely subtle gradations of flavor and scent? What stuck in my mind was the tea-ness of tea, floral aroma, hints of fruit and wood on the palate, and a fragile astringency that buzzed in my mouth long after the liquid had gone down. But which cup had that been, the Makaibari or the Glenburn? Or had I just imagined it?

By Matt Gross

New library at Makaibari Tea Estates

Kurseong : From The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai to Timi Bhayako Nabhayako Bhela by Nepali author Satish Rasaily — the new library at Makaibari Tea Estate has it all.

The community library, which has come up in a single room on the garden premises, 3km from here, was the brainchild of two US visitors Mike Matergia and Denna Weiss. It was inaugurated today by Srirupa Banerjee, the wife of Makaibari owner Rajah Banerjee, in a program attended by workers of the estate, management staff members and children from a primary school near the estate.

“We came here to work on a community health program. During our stay, we got involved with the people here and decided to build a library for them. At present there are 1,600 books, a TV with DVD player, and one computer to be used by students,” said Mike before the inauguration. Both Mike and Denna are from Pennsylvania.

“The people really have been wonderful in lending support to the library project. We had been working day and night so that we could inaugurate it today as we have to go back soon,” she said.

The Community Health Advancement Initiative — an NGO based in Darjeeling, which conducts community health programs in the garden — has been instrumental in building the library and learning center.

“We mainly looked after the construction of the building and its interiors. We are happy that the people here will also have a library,” said Sunil Gurung the project officer of the NGO.

A committee comprising representatives from seven villages here will look into the functioning of the library for the first two months.

Source: The Telegraph

Makaibari to get a library as a parting gift

Denna Weiss and Mike Matergia had come to Makaibari Tea Estate with a purpose.

While Denna was here to teach the children of the estate, Mike came for a health project. Both of them had come down from Pennsylvania, USA.

Four months later, however, the duo have decided to build a library in the area as a parting gift to the people they had befriended.

“During our stay here we found that there is need for a good library. It will benefit students and general people alike,” Mike told The Telegraph today.

The duo are working round the clock to ensure the success of their brainchild.

“We mailed our friends and parents back home informing them about the library here. Our parents were really interested and our friends also decided to contribute. Till date we have already collected a good number of books and around US $ 3,000 for the library,” Denna said.

The Makaibari tea estate authorities have donated already a 29ft by 20ft plot and a two-storied building is under construction there. While the ground floor will have a crèche to be built by the estate authorities, the first floor will house the library.

Denna said the library would have all types of books necessary for students. The construction of the library is also being funded by them.

“The single-room library will contain around 850 books out of which 40, on various subjects like health, meditation and yoga, will be in local languages. There will be English books of all types for school and college students. Besides, a computer with internet connection and a DVD player will also be installed,” Denna said.

Mike said they would be here till September and hoped to finish the project by then.

Rajah Banerjee, the proprietor of the estate, has expressed happiness over the initiative.

“As soon as we heard of the project from them we immediately donated the land and some funds. The library will be an asset for the residents here,” he said.

Source: The Telegraph

Honey at Makaibari Tea Estates

Buzz is the word at the Makaibari tea estate.

After offering home stay to tourists, workers at the garden, located 3 km from here, have found a new way to earn that extra bit — beekeeping and selling honey.

With encouragement from the proprietor of the estate, Raja Banerjee, and help from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Darjeeling, nine workers have set up an apiary, which they hope will soon become a major source of additional income. “We have nine members in our co-operative society who have started beekeeping. Almost two years ago, our sahib (Raja Banerjee) gave us around Rs10,000 to form the co-operative, buy beehives and set up the necessary infrastructure,” said Santosh Rai, the secretary of the Buzz Co-operative Society.

“We had started at a very low scale, but it has grown over the years. Today, we have around 35 hives from where we extract honey and sell them at Rs 200 per bottle,” said Rai, who is a security guard at the factory. And of course, the money comes handy. “We find it the most beneficial at the beginning of new sessions in schools when we have to buy books, uniforms and other necessary items for our children. The extra money kind of eases the burden and we do not have to worry about our wards’ education,” said Janak Chettri, a member of the society.

Initially, the co-operative granted loans — from the money given by Banerjee — to interested workers to install beehives on the plots in front of their homes.

“Every member has four hives, from which we extract honey twice a year. We get around four bottles of honey from one hive,” said Rai, who has seven beehives at his place. “Usually we get the extract once in April-May and again in November-December.”

A training camp will be held this November or December, for which the WWF has promised to send an expert to teach the volunteers the know-how of beekeeping.

In a bid to increase the production, the society now plans to raise the number of beehives to at least 1,000. “Our sahib, who is very interested in the project, told us that we can get a machine for bottling the honey and labelling the containers. One day, we hope to make it big in the market, set up a company and get a patent for our produce,” Rai added.

Though Banerjee was not available for comment, deputy manager Debarata Majumdar told The Telegraph that inspired by the hard work put in by the workers, the management is now planning to export honey.

“Since ours is an organic garden, the bee population is pretty high here. With encouragement from Mr Bannerjee, the labourers have utilised the opportunity well,” Majumdar said. “For export, we have to produce around 10,000 bottles of honey every year. We think we can make it within the next two years.”

Source: The Telegraph

Makaibari Tea Estate against Plastic carry bags

Makaibari tea estate, located 3 km from here, is waging a war against plastic carry bags with the help of children and tourists.

In a bid to keep the garden clean and green, the management has asked children from seven villages to collect plastic bags and dry cells (torch batteries) accumulated in the area, promising to buy back the non-biodegradable waste at the rate of Rs 2 per kg.

Every Sunday, the children are coming to the garden factory with their collection to get it weighed by the authorities. Apart from the money, they are also given sweets from time to time to ensure that their spirit does not flag.

The accumulated waste is then loaded on a tractor and sent to a recycling factory in Siliguri.

Deputy manager of the garden Debarata Majumdar said this was a 10-year-old plan, revived recently. “Earlier, the children and their parents did not take the project seriously. We could not make them realise that plastics bags are harmful for both people and tea bushes,” he said.

So the garden authorities decided to take the help of tourists who come and stay with the labourers. “We asked the tourists to help us spread awareness since they spend days living with them in their houses like a member of the family. The plan worked. Now, the parents, too, pick up plastic bags and other stuff along with their wards though we purchase the waste only from the children,” Majumdar said.

“Whatever the children earn, we let them keep as pocket money,” said Robin Khawas, a worker at the garden.

The deputy manager said Makaibari’s location made it more susceptible to the plastic menace than other gardens in the hills. He pointed out that the garden lies beside the Pankhabari route used by most vehicles returning to Siliguri from Darjeeling. “The people travelling on this road throw lot of garbage out of their vehicles and these accumulate around the tea bushes. This is why we started this project,” Majumdar said.