Tea picking seems to be quite a sociable affair and the women are animatedly chatting to each other on the steep hillside plantations. Their bright cheery faces probably belies the fact that this is a tedious and wearying job offering very little stimulation other than what you can draw out of your neighbouring tea pickers. There’s no refuge from the heat of the sun and I was told that pay is on a piece-meal basis – so high productivity is necessary to eke out a reasonable pay. But it’s even more complicated than that because quality control takes place on the roadside and we saw bags of leaves, deposited on the verge by the pickers, being sorted into piles (the younger leaves having a higher premium).

Visiting the plantations towards the end of the day seems to be a good idea because you do get a real sense of activity around the plantations including the pickers at work, leaf sorting, workers walking to and from their temporary homes and the loading and transportation of the filled bags to the factory. This is a labour intensive business and although it looks disorganised we knew that there must be “well oiled” cogs at work to ensure that the pickings reached the factory as speedily as is practicable. Tractors and oxen and cart are the main method of transport, but the Indian way seems to use plenty of people to load the bags of tea onto the carts - we did see up to six labourers working on one load, but they were in no hurry.

The views across the plantations are spectacular with bright flashes from the colourful dresses of the workers. Mostly the workers use an “automated tea leaf collector” (a box attached to a pair of garden shears collects the leaves as are clipped – low tech but it works), but the occasional older worker was nipped the leaves off by hand. It is absolutely fascinating to watch and generally the workers did not seem to be offended by our gawking.

This visit did raise questions in our minds about the commercial exploitation of economically deprived people and we were somewhat appalled to hear that workers could start tea harvesting from the age of 11 and continue when they finally collapsed in the fields. Their pay is minimal (indeed our driver said that the workers are brought over from the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu to work on the plantations as people in Kerala could earn better money) and often will spend the vast majority of the picking season in basic barrack accommodation provided by the tea company. That said, I AM a tea drinker and can now appreciate the time and effort that goes into harvesting the product.

The Happy Valley Tea Estate, which we visited, is about a mile and a half from the town. During the picking season - Easter to November - it's a fascinating place to visit. On the walk there, you can wander through the terraced plantations and watch the women at work, picking the tea, and putting the leaves in the baskets strapped around their heads. Be warned - if you have long fair hair as I do, you may get it pulled so they can decide if it's real or not!

The estate itself is fascinating. There is a large plant to dry, process, and pack the tea; the machinery is stamped and dated with the mark 'Belfast, 1891' on it, and it still works well today, using the original combination of steam power and fan belts to produce the finished article you can purchase in the market in Darjeeling. Men in the basement keep the boilers stoked up with coal, so the power doesn't give out. The tea is dried in huge containers, then crushed slightly and sorted. There are many different grades of tea, ranging from the tips of the Orange Pekoe first picking, to the large leaves that fall on the floor, are picked up and sold as "Russian grade tea." It's a fascinating place to visit, and will make your cuppa tea back home more interesting, now you know how it is made!