Makaibari Tea Estate

Greetings from Darjeeling! Well, technically, we're in Kurseong. Actually, we're in a village called Makaibari, which is a bit south of Kurseong, which is 29 Km south of the town of Darjeeling. But it's all in the Darjeeling district, so who's keeping track? And it's India so do you really expect anything to be straightforward (insert head wobble)!

After a hair-riaising taxi ride - our first of many - up here from the train station, we arrived at the Makaibari Tea Estate (www.makaibari.com), our home for the next month or so.


maggie arriving at the estate

Seth used to serve and enjoy Makaibari tea many years ago when he worked at Tealuxe, and we both had been planning for this moment a long time, so it was an incredible experience to actually show up at the place where it's all grown an processed.


a bird's eye view of the factory and surrounding village

The people here are wonderful - everyone is extremely nice and welcoming, and all of the village children are eager to practice their English on a couple of fair-skinned folks passing by. It is weird to think that we are still in India - the people here are an ethnic mix of Indian, Tibetan, and, especially, Nepali. Most people here are fluent in Nepali, Hindi, and Bengali, and a lot are pretty good at English. We're doing our best to learn a few basics of Nepali.

Shortly after we arrived, we were introduced to Pasan, whose house we are staying at while we are here. It's a wonderful slice of Makaibari life. We share the house with Pasan, his wife Sonju, their 5-year old son Sonam, his two parents, his cousin-brother (male cousin) Rupak, 4 goats, about 8 chickens, a dog, a cat, and an 11' x 12' cherry tomato plant.


seth in front of the house where we're staying. it's the green one.


the giant tomato plant coming in through the kitchen window

In our first week we had a quick crash course in the whole operation, and got to spend an entire day plucking tea, learning the proper "two leaves and a bud" technique. There's definitely more of that to come. By the end of the week, we were sat down at a meeting with all of the field managers and grilled by them as to our future plans with tea. At the end of the meeting, all of the managers, as well as the owner of Makaibari (more on him soon) applauded us and our plans. Incredible.


typical sight.


even more typical sight.


tea!


our new friend lila showing us the proper pluck.


maggie plucking properly.

The Darjeeling Limited (with unlimited food)

Our final day in Delhi was a bit hectic, with a couple tourist-y things on the agenda while making sure we got to the train station in time to catch the 2424 Rajdhani Express out to New Jalpaiguri, our stopping point at the foothills of the Himalayas. Before we left, though, we wanted to make sure to visit Gandhi Smriti, the place where Mahatma Gandhi was living when he was assassinated in 1948 and where he was shot.


gandhi smriti.


footsteps showing gandhi's final path before his assassination.

Then we took a quick rickshaw ride around the block to the Indira Gandhi museum, which is situated around the house she lived in and the place where she was assassinated by her bodyguards in 1984 (pretty amazing that she and Mahatma - no relation - were assassinated so close to one another.



Then we took our final rickshaw in Delhi to the New Delhi Train Station (for those IHPers reading who know there's a difference...), where we joined the throbbing mass of people heading towards their trains.


seth in the train station.

Finally we found ourselves situated in our 3-tier AC cabin, surrounded by people from all over India (and 3 Japanese teenagers on spring break - woohoo! India! Spring Break!) - our home for the next 24 hours. We'll let the pictures (and their captions) tell the rest of the story...


view of the mighty ganges from the train.


the bank of the ganges.


maggie bein' productive on the train.


meals on wheels!


the meal on wheels!


i wasn't getting enough tea on the train, so i jumped off the train at a stop to get some chai from a little stall.


breakfast.


ingenious water bottle holder beneath the little table between seats. very discreet. so discreet that maggie left her bottle on the train.

a list of animals we saw in delhi

many dogs (stray)
many cows (also stray)
an elephant (being ridden down the highway)
several chickens
a few big mice (under our feet in a little food stall. we left.)
several goats (stray?)
many parrots (wild)
several monkeys (in the rafters at the train station)

where the **** is DHL?

our time here in delhi has been great. we are in constant amazement at how many people there are. there seems to be a constant stream of people moving throughout the city. not surprising since the population is over 13 million people!

we've seen many of the important landmarks that are to be seen here, which by the way is the site of no fewer than 8 successive cities. several of these i saw when i was here on IHP (the International Honors Program, www.ihp.edu), but it has been wonderful to revisit them and to share them with Seth.
just down the block from our hotel is the Lotus Temple, a Baha'i Temple. the architecture is breath-taking, and as you get close to the building, especially near the steps to the reflecting pools it feels like you're in the middle of Logan's Run. that's a shout out to all you Texans reading along!


we've ridden on many of the transportation options available in delhi, not all by a long shot. the city is in the process of building a METRO. this is scheduled to be completed no sooner than 2021 -this could become India's Big Dig Project. we've been in taxis and auto rickshaws.

and today for the first time we rode in a cycle rickshaw.

unfortunately the Indian postal service, especially with packages is incredibly unreliable. today after walking the streets back and forth and asking directions from five different people we finally found DHL where I was able to mail the fabric


i purchased for my wedding dress.

tomorrow we leave for darjeeling. buying the tickets was true india. a man desperately trying to convince us that we should leave the train station and follow him across the street to the foreign ticket office. try as he may we made it to the real ticket office for foreigners and man was it worth it! not only did we hassle free purchase our tickets, we got to see Indian design at it's best. check out the relief wall map


that giant ridge on the upper right of the country? that's the himalayas. we'll be going partially up that to get to darjeeling, where we'll be living and working for the next month. my favorite, though, is the map of the room telling me where i'm at.


we will be travelling by train-it is scheduled to be about a 20 hour trip. onwards and upwards (literally), to darjeeling!

kosher delhi

namaste! here we are at the end of our first full day in delhi, and our spirits are up, up, up. we've had a wonderful day. delhi is like everyone says - huge and crowded. on the road from the airport to our hotel (from 3-3:45 am), we saw: auto- and cycle-rickshaws everywhere, a newlywed couple's car covered in flowers, people making a fire along the side of the road, every kind of traffic violation imaginable, and a bunch of cows along the side of and in the road.

this morning in our first 5 minutes out in the city, we saw an elephant on the highway. (by morning, i mean mid-afternoon, by the way. we got to the hotel at 4 am - cut us some slack!).

we spent a busy day today looking for fabric for maggie's wedding dress and generally getting acquainted with the city. in some ways the most exciting part was the price of the food: lunch - $5; dinner - $4. that was for both of us, after tax and tip. try to find THAT on chowhound USA.

we ended the night with an auto-rickshaw ride back to the hotel. these are a lot cheaper than taxis, and very cute looking. and they all run on compressed natural gas now, which is nice!

now here are some pictures:

aloo gobhi - $1; bangan bharta - $1; free plate of raw onions and half a lemon - priceless

view from an auto rickshaw

us in rickshaw

us in front of the India Gate

when we got back to our hotel, there was a wedding festivity taking place in the parking lot, which we stood and watched for a while. right next to the rightmost bright light is the groom on a horse.