The local story
A kingdom's tea garden on the Lepcha hill
Across the border in Darjeeling, tea had been planted since the 1850s, but the kingdom of Sikkim had no tea estate of its own. That changed in 1969, when Sikkim was still ruled by the Chogyal, Palden Thondup Namgyal, and his government set up a tea garden at Temi on the southern slopes of Tendong Hill. Six years later, in 1975, Sikkim became a state of India, and the garden passed to the new state government. It covers about 177 ha and was, for decades, the only tea estate in Sikkim.
The bushes run down the hill in long contour rows from about 1,800 m to about 1,200 m, looking across the Teesta valley. Workers, many of them women from the villages around the estate, pluck by hand from spring to late autumn, and the leaf goes to the garden's own factory on the hill. The estate moved to organic cultivation and is certified organic, which fits a state that was declared India's first fully organic state in 2016. Temi tea is sold under the garden's own name, and its first flush is plucked in March and April.
Above the garden rises Tendong Hill, which Lepcha elders say rose up to save their people from a great flood, a story remembered every 8 August. Along Temi's roads and paths stand Himalayan cherry trees, which flower not in spring but in autumn, turning the edges of the estate pink in November. In recent years Sikkim has promoted this season with a cherry blossom festival at Temi. The estate itself remains a working farm first: visitors walk the roads and paths, not the tea rows.
