Unfortunately, there was no mountain view to go with the Mountain Dew. Monsoon season had just begun in Nepal, bringing clouds and occasional downpours. Outside the propjet’s windows, gray clouds blanketed the earth, including its highest point. We knew Mount Everest was out there somewhere. But with the monsoon, no one expected to get more than a glimpse of the Himalayas for the rest of the summer.
Monsoon season meant little to my traveling companions, a couple of tea men from my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Buyers for Tazo Tea, they set their clocks to a different cycle of nature. To them, this was the height of second flush.
In tea terms, a flush has nothing to do with either fevers or toilets. It means a period of new growth of the tender top leaves of the tea bush. In high mountain regions such as eastern Nepal, a flush generally lasts about a month and a half. That’s when women pluckers in colorful garb snake through acres of waist-high tea bushes, breaking off the very tip of each branch—namely the top bud and the next two leaves—and dropping it into bamboo baskets carried on their backs.
Steve Smith, the founder of Tazo Tea, and Tony Tellin, his assistant tea buyer, were sampling the teas of Nepal for the first time. Ordinarily, their destination in the Himalayan foothills would be neighboring Darjeeling, India, where Smith has been buying tea for some 20 years. But the tea growers of Nepal, where the 150-year-old industry has recently been revived after a long period of stagnation, were eager to show off their wares.
After the Buddha Air flight touched down in Biratnagar, we were met by Suraj Vaidya, a successful businessman from Katmandu. Vaidya’s pedigree was impressive: Son of a business leader, his cousin was the late Tanzing Norgay, the famous Sherpa who led Sir Edmund Hillary up Mount Everest. Married to a former Miss India, Vaidya is at age 43 the president of Guranse Tea, a pioneer in the Nepalese tea renaissance.
On top of all that, he is the Toyota dealer for all of Nepal, so he had a brand-new Toyota van waiting to carry us over winding mountain roads to Guranse Tea, where acres of lush, green tea bushes dot the steep hillsides. Vaidya took us on a tour of the tea processing plant, where freshly plucked tea leaves are dried, rolled and fired in a low oven before being packed and shipped. We each were given a package of Guranse tea as a souvenir.
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