Moo's Mid Life Crisis: India - Travel to Mysuru

Next day was another travel day as we drove to Mysore/Mysuru. Lots of cities in India are changing their names back from the anglicised versions to the older original Indian versions. Kochi/Cochin, Mysore/Mysuru, Bangalore/Bengaluru. I have to admit it's a bit confusing sometimes when the same place is referred to by 2 different but similar sounding names, and with my unfamiliarity of Indian geography and place names generally I'm more lost than usual.

To kick off the travel, we stopped at a local tea factory to see how tea is processed. This was actually a really interesting addition to the tea picking and making we did in China, and showed how the processes were industrialized and scaled up. The machinery they are using is up to 90 years old (with repairs and improvements), but the process is the same.

Leaves are withered with hot air (200+ degrees) to reduce the moisture content by 50%
Withered leaves are rolled/crushed.
Crushed leaves are seperated by size
'Fermentation' step, where the leaves are left exposed to the air to oxidize with controlled temperature and humidity.
Leaves are dried to stop further oxidation (150 degrees)
Dried leaves are sorted to separate stems and stalks from leaf. The stems and stalks are often used to make tea bags.
Leaf is again graded by size (into 7 sizes in this factory)
and again sorted to remove impurities.

We did of course sample some of the tea and it was delightful.

Wilting - hot air coming up from beneath

'munging'

munged leaves

Sorting the size of the munged leaves

Oxidizing / 'fermentation'

Drying

dried leaves

Sorting, part 1

Sorting part 2

sorting part 3!

One interesting thing about the tea plantations I didn't know before is that the trees throughout tea and coffee plantations are used to support vines for growing peppercorns. A good multipurpose use of the land!

Tea picking in India also seems to be a bit more industrialized than we saw in China (though that may just have been the tea plantation we visited there). Instead of plucking just the bud and first two leaves, they often use garden shears with a bag attached to clip more generally, or getting more industrial still, some hedge clippers with a bag attached!

After the tea factory we began the 5 hour drive to Mysore. A good chunk of the drive was through 2 other tiger sanctuaries (all 3 of them are the same big sanctuary, just with different names in the 3 different regions that it spans).