A Tea for All

Darjeeling. The land of tea. I personally prefer darjeeling tea to just about any other because it is meant to be drunk black with no milk or sugar. We had lots of tea in our time here. In particular we went to the Sunset Lounge which is run by Nathmulls, one of Darjeeling's oldest tea companies. Here I had the pleasure of drinking a cup of one of the finest tea blends in all of Darjeeling. At 80 rupees for a single cup, it is the elite of black tea. Is there really a difference in tea quality, you might ask? Well at first, no. A high quality tea and a regular tea will taste the same right when it is brewed. But, if you let it sit and develop its flavor a regular quality tea will take on the bitter quality that makes most people run for milk and sugar. A high quality tea will mature in this time to display its hidden flavor whether that be fruity or floral or smoky. The one I was drinking took on an almost woody floral, being a second flush muscatel. Second flushes (the second round of tea picked in a single season) is not grassy and light like the first flush and yet not smoky and woody like the autumn batch. Instead it is somewhere in between, not quite a delicate flavor but not quite the full bodied flavor that is so distinct of an autumn. All this jargon is nice and all, but the question is, do you like it? My answer? Meh. Black teas are nice and I could definitely appreciate the nuances of my fine black tea, but give me a cuppa green tea any day. For some reason, people tend to find green tea bitter. Bitter? I don't see it. In fact, compared to the black, my green tea was so smooth it could have been water. It had the light, weightless taste of new grown grass and sunshine on flowery hills. It surpassed all green teas that I've ever tasted and left my body with a warm happy feeling. I only hope that when I brew it myself I will be able to extract the same intricacies. The brewing process is extremely important with tea. Over-steep it and you lose the delicate flavors to harsh replacements. Don't steep it enough and you don't give the leaf time to realize it's potential. Luckily, all Nathmulls tea comes with instructions on how to properly brew it. I spent more on tea than almost any other souvenir that I purchased and I consider it money very well spent. It may not be able to capture the ambiance of the clear glass teacups and the giant glass windows and the sound of the manager's son wreaking havoc on the tea shop and all of its employees, but it will be a reminder of a time where all we had to do in a day was sit and drink tea.

Because really that's basically all we did in Darjeeling. Tragically, it was really foggy and cloudy everyday we were there so we could have been at the bottom of a valley for all we knew. We saw no Himalayas, no Everest, we could barely see the next hill over! Every morning we woke up with the hopes that we could see the views that this area is so famous for and every day we were disappointed. Thank goodness we went to Nagarkot in Nepal or we would have missed the Himalayas entirely!

We did have a really fun day at the zoo. Now normally we don't partake in anything that horribly touristy, however, our German friends who we've been running into since Varanasi told us that it was actually a really fun time. For lack of nothing else to do we decided to go. It was really ingesting because for the most part, (aside from some random macaws from South America) all of the animals were indigenous to the area. We saw the Himalayan black bear, a really cute thing that is hunted for its gall bladder which is used in traditional Chinese medicine. We saw a bunch of lazing jungle cats including a snow leopard and a clouded leopard. The one animal that didn't make an appearance was Richard Parker himself! While all of the other jungle cats had a cage of maybe 20x20 feet, the tiger cage was a paradise with trees and hills and plenty of hiding spots. It was impossible to see the entire enclosure so we must assume that he was hiding so where out of sight in the sun. There were some ally interesting ungulates that I had never seen before including one, called a Blue Sheep, that looked like it was wearing little stockings! But the pride and joy of the zoo and my visit was the red pandas. There were a lot of enclosures dedicated to these strange furry creatures and each housed one or two pandas. We saw some sleeping in trees, their little black limbs thrown over the branches. There was one that was trying to walk down a branch to the ground. It wasn't very sure-footed and it kept slipping and then re-righting itself just in time! There was one that was irritated, pacing back and forth on the edge of his cage. I think he could sense his friend on the other side because he clearly wanted to be in the other cage. The way they walk is unlike any animal I have ever seen. They walk bow-legged stamping down distinctly on each limb. The only way I can think to describe it is that they look like a stuffed animal come to life! I would imagine my teddy bear to totter along in the same fashion. They were just too cute!

We decided to treat ourselves to high tea at the Windamere Hotel. It's been a while since we've done anything nice and what better place to have high tea than in Darjeeling? Walking in to the hotel we felt very obviously out of place. They sat us in a sitting room with a cozy fire and plush pink furniture. For the first hour, neither of us could force our voices over a whisper, for fear of some unknown punishment. The tea wasn't fantastic but the tea treats were. We had buttery biscuits with jam and cream, scones, cucumber sandwiches, cheese and chutney sandwiches, cake, and shortbread cookies. It was quite a spread. Although everything was bite sized, all of that rich food did a number on our stomachs and we departed satisfied but very full. It was a nice break to be in a place where the bathrooms actually have toilet paper and there aren't the tell-tale signs of mold and vermin.

Other than that, I can't say we did very much. And before we knew it, we were on our way back to Kolkata, our last stop before moving on to Thailand!