Tea plantations

24.03.12

We left Kandy this morning and travelled to higher ground to where a lot of the countries tea plantations are situated.

Sri Lanka is responsible for 1/5 of the worlds tea production. Even more than China!

We visited one of the producers and were shown how they grade and categorise black tea, green tea and silver and white tip tea. Then take the leaves and dry them before crushing and filtering them. All in all quite a time consuming process from bush to cup of tea but they do it all manually to a point, watched and tweaked whilst the giant presses do their thing.

This blip shows the tea pickers at work, each woman collects approx 20kg of tea tips everyday!