When I visited India for the first time last year, I met an old fortune teller who assured me I'd be back -- in 2007. My apologies, dear sir, but circumstances disproved your prediction. I just returned from two weeks in the subcontinent, where I researched a story about Darjeeling tea for Saveur magazine. In the next few posts I'll talk more about this tea and the remarkable people who make it. But first let me answer, where in the world is Darjeeling?
If you look at a map of India, you'll see to the northeast (look top, right) that the country shoots out over Bangladesh to border Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet. Up in that corner, at the northern tip of the West Bengal state, in the foothills of the mighty Himalayas, is where you'll find Darjeeling. I traveled there with my friend and tea authority Sebastian Beckwith, a founder of In Pursuit of Tea. He visits Darjeeling every year to check out the crop and learn more about how the tea's made. I got the inspired idea to tag along with him this time to learn, too. We landed at the closest airport, a few hours away, and after visiting nearby Sikkim and Darjeeling town, hired a car to visit a tea estate called Goomtee, located deep in the foothills. We followed a steep, narrow "highway" -- more a casually paved one lane road with two lanes of traffic that wound up and around mountains covered in thick jungle. Along the outside edge of the pavement (or lack thereof) were sheer 2,000 foot drops, no guard rails. Cars, trucks, motorcycles and buses passed each other though a lingua franca of horn honking, complicated roadside choreography and countless games of Chicken.
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