The general what’s-it-ness of it all…Part II

I finally left the city for my first overnight trip since arriving to go to a tea estate to do some interviews. I don’t know if any of you are tea snobs, I mean, *cough*, aficionados, but I was at Margaret’s Hope. Maybe the name means something to you, maybe it doesn’t. Anyway, had a fabulous time—toured the factory, met the very nice and very helpful estate manager, and stayed with my friend’s family. These are photos of part of the estate:

It is very steep and the workers pluck everything by hand:

You can imagine, working all day long walking up and down these hills plucking tea. So think of them when you drink Darjeeling tea—they’ve worked hard for it, so you’d better enjoy it!

We stayed with a friend’s family, who had a new little puppy. It had a sibling, but it died a few weeks before. The puppy is very small and adorable in a sort of living-cotton-ball way. But he did love to be held and got a little scared during the amazingly bad hail storm we had that night. This is a photo of another friend holding said puppy:

We didn’t just have fun with puppies and hail…I actually got some work done as well. This is a photo of me interviewing an old man at the estate:

We walked to his house and asked his son where he was, since I was looking for someone who was working before the British left India. So the son called down to a small plot of land where this 95-year-old man was working among the plants. He walked over, brushed the dirt off his hands, and gave me what has become one of my favorite interviews. What a character! He is partially deaf, and so my research assistant had to yell to him since he couldn’t understand my ‘strange’ accent! But he managed to charm us all and I was very sorry that the interview had to end. I didn’t even realize we were done talking, when suddenly he said, “Ok, I’m going to work now.” Very matter-of-factly. Just got up, smiled, and walked away. What a great guy.