Darjeeling Fresh

Up here at Liza Hills, things move a bit slower than down in the main towns. We are part of the tea estate area in Lower Chongtong, which is a bit of a drive if you’re coming up from Bijanbari. Most days start early before the sun is even fully over the ridges. You can hear the pickers talking as they head out into the rows of bushes. Our place, Darjeeling Fresh, is right in the middle of all that green. We don’t have a big fancy office with glass walls or anything. It is mostly just a practical space where we handle the daily work. The mist comes in thick sometimes, especially during the monsoon months, and everything gets damp. We spend a lot of time checking on the leaves and making sure the bags are stacked right. The roads around here can be tricky when it rains, so we have to plan our transport carefully. Local people from the village nearby come in to help out. It’s a lot of manual work, getting our hands dirty and staying on our feet. We drink a lot of tea ourselves just to keep going through the chilly mornings. It’s not a complicated life, but it keeps us busy from dawn until the light fades over the hills. We’ve been at this for a while now and the routine is pretty much set in stone. It is just the way things are in the hills.