After checking out the tea plantations, coffee plantations, cardamon and pepper groves this morning in a rickshaw...we didn't go to the sandalwood forest because it was 46 km from town..., I spent some time in spice shops in Munnar. Cardamon, peppers of a range of colors, nutmegs, anise, star anise, couscous (haven't figured that one out), little twists of tumeric, not to mention the teas themselves. Still when Sindo brought me tea at the cottage at 7:00 am this morning (he knew the rickshaw was coming at 7:30), it was fairly standard Tata bags. Tata is the huge Indian conglomerate that owns almost all the plantations around here in spite of the hostility of the State government which, for a number of years, has been run by the Communist Party...hence the occassional appearance of the hammer and sickle on abandoned workers' housing. But the tea, Tata or non-Tata, hit the spot as the fog was lifting out of the valley below the cottage.
