For the jaded traveller treading the conventional Indian tourist route, a brief sojourn in an Assam tea-plantation looms as a novel experience. Parched with the heat of a packed itinerary and continuous travel, he would discover a tea-plantation to be an oasis of tranquillity, where to rest his weary feet, let his hair down and reinvigorate the body and mind for onward journeys to distant climes.
Oh yes, the sights, sounds and srnegs of an Assam tea- plantation are of a different kind than what normally confronts the tourist in India. No architectural marvels here, certainly- the planter's bungalow or the tea-workers' hutments would hardly qualify for ones! Not the colour and vibrancy (and haggling and jostling and badgering and pestering!) of a native bazaar. As for snake charmers or levitating fakirs, perish the very thought!

Instead, what a tea-plantation in Assam offers to a casual visitor is a subtle ambience- a mental and sensory quietude- rarely to be experienced elsewhere. Imagine yourself in a tea-plantation on a spring-scented evening, seated on the verandah of your host's bungalow, watching the twilight melt unhurriedly into the night. Overhead, the sable sky is miraculously low and clear, and studded with myriad bits of glowing sapphire. The fireflks dance their aerial waltz in the air around you,bhnking off and on like thousands of signal-lamps sending out incoherent messages in esoteric cipher. The silence is so thick that you can reach out and touch it. Only a few sounds ripple through this pall of quietness- distant baying of jackals, the sporadic song of cicadas or the flapping wings of a bat out in quest of its dinner.
Allow this ambience to permeate your very being and wrap your soul in prophylactic silence. Couched within this deep quietude you will find your thoughts turning inwards preparing your n-dnd towards closer communion vath God and Nature. Perhaps within this all pervasive silence you would be offered a glimpse of those elusive truths which you had been unconsciously searching for all through your life.

Tea-plantations in Assam, unlike those in China or Japan for instance, are comparatively big, spanning hundreds of acre. Thus they offer you the spatial freedom to meander through them, watching the dappled sunlight filter through the shade trees and weave patterns of black and white on the neatly pruned tea-bushes. You are surrounded by a veritable sea of verdure, stretching across all around as far as the eyes can see, vath the tall shade trees standing watchful amongst them, like shepherds guarding their flocks of sheep. Green, they say, is the colour which soothes the eye. A tea-plantation, literally, is a sight for sore eyes !

Watch the tea-pluckers at work. Admire the deftness of their fingers as they pluck the delicate two leaves and a bud from which the "nectar of the gods" is made. Stroll on towards the tea-factory. Savour the heady, warm aroma of fresh-baked tea leaves which permeate every nook and cranny of the place. The factory is the very heart of the plantation- it is here that the magical transformation of the green leaves into the brown-black threads or globules which we call tea takes place. Assam plantations produce BLACK tea, far different in taste and colour from the GREEN tea made in China. If you are interested in knowing how BLACK tea is manufactured, an willing assistant would surely enlighten you. Saunter into a tea-mrkers' Basti and take a peek at the way they live. They are a happy go lucky lot, full of laughter and music, who take life as it comes and often break out into a song for apparently no reason at all. If you are fortunate, you might catch them performing a Parab or festival. They celebrate a host of Parabs- Tusu parab, Karam puja, Saharal parab, Bir puja, Charul pujo, onosa puja and so on. These festivals are celebrated not only ritualistically, but also with dance, music and feasting. The songs sung during Karom puja for instance, are called Jhumur Geet. The Jhumur songs are replete with enchanting descriptions of the beauty of Nature and express emotions like love, sorrow and joy.

Each tea-garden in Assam has its own history- often one of sweat and toil and gore and death. A majority of the plantations were begun and built up through British ingenuity and enterprise. Three individuals- Maniram Dutta Barua, an Assamese noblemen and two intrepid British adventurers, Robert Bruce and his brother Charles Alexander Bruce- were instrumental in enlightening the British administration in the early part of nineteenth century about wild tea bushes growing in Assam, and thereby pointing the way to a possible alternative source of the cups which 11 cheer but not inebriate". The first tea company in the world, The Assam Company, spent almost two decades before effectively demonstrating that tea-grovang in Assam was a commer- cially viable prospect. Its success induced in the 1860s hordes of European speculators to make a bee line for Assam, buy or lease vast tracts of virgin land, and hack out tea-plantations from dense jungles.

No trip to Upper Assam can be complete without a visit to one of the numerous tea-gardens that stand, lush and verdant, all around the valley. The tea gardens of Assam have a unique ambience, and a cultu- ral entity that makes them stand apart from other such plantations else - where.

It is a treat to breathe in the very air here. Fresh and pollution-free, the atmosphere is invigorating. Though the operations in the gardens are ]a- bour-intensive, and involve extremely hard work, they are seasonal. A visit to the gardens, with their rolling, impeccably maintained verdant acres, as well as a trip to a garden factory to see the actual process of curing and preparing the leaves, is a very interest- ing experience. If your visit coincides with a local festival such as Bihu, you can watch some colourful local games such as cock-fighting, egg-cracking, and so on. Besides, the "Jhumur" dances of the tea-gardens are famous for their vibrant grace.