This trip has a lot of gardens on the itinerary, but I also wanted to visit a tea plantation. Today that wish came true and it was spectacular. We visited a tea factory this morning and that was interesting enough, but it was very commercial. Vaishakh suggested that he could take us to an authentic tea estate further outside Ooty where there would be no tourists. Boy did he deliver.

The estate he took us too was called Glendale (or so the hotel porter said when we showed him our pictures), the oldest in the area, established over 80 years ago. The factory wasn’t working today as it was a holiday, but they were happy for us to look around. It was like a time capsule with much of the machinery looking like it was also 80 years old. Certainly made way before the sort of health and safely rules we have in the UK, barely a safety guard in sight. My boss would have a fit!

The factory was really interesting, but it was the tea plantation that stole the show. Although it was a holiday for the factory workers, the workers picking (almost all women) were still working as they were paid depending how much they picked. As one said to Vaishakh, no work today, no food tomorrow. It struck home how hard they work for very little, and how privileged we are.

The tree bushes grow for between 40-50 years. It’s just the fresh leaves and tips that the pickers want, and they repeat the picking of every bush every 15 days to keep them in shape. All the tea picking is done by hand using a sort of pair of garden shears with a dust pan attached. As the shears chops, the tips collect in the pan. When that’s full they go into the sack. It was mesmerising to watch. I had to pinch myself to prove I was really standing in an Indian tea plantation. The tea bushes went on for as far as the eye could see, it was stunning.

As we were leaving we passed an amazing red bush. I had to look twice to realise that it was actually a huge Poinsettia. Here it was happy as Larry growing on the edge of the tea plantation, extraordinary!