“Tea makes everything better “- Bindi Irwin

• As rightly said so, a visit to the Tea factory and the Tea Museum located at the Dodabetta Road in Ooty (Nilgiris) can make your trip to the mesmerizing hill station of Ooty even better.
• Not just tea lovers, even those tea-shunners who abstain from having tea can view here riveting snippets on how tea, as a beverage and an important trade commodity has had an impact on the economic, social and cultural history of the world, thereby influencing the growth of Tea.
• The Tea Factory, established in 2005 by Mr. N.K.Krishnamoorthy, former Member of Tea Board, manages to produce 30 tonnes of tea every month. With an experience of over 35 years in Tea field operations, it was a dream come true for him.
• The factory is spread over an area of 1 acre in the lap of nature, surrounded by green tea plantations, at a height of 1839m above sea level.
• Once at the factory you can see the entire ‘Leaf to Tea’ cycle right from when the tea leaves picked in the tea plantations are brought to the factory for withering, to the drying, rolling and shifting phases…until the tea grains are packed into jute bags and shipped for delivery.
• Next, you can watch the machines in operation. The tea passes over several machines maintaining the tea in motion, giving it a liquid state look. Thus the name ‘Fluid bed drier’. For the tea leaves to dry, it takes 16 minutes. One of the machines, the Rotorvane, then crushes the leaves and extracts the juices before they enter into the CTC machines.
• At the Tea Museum, you will get to learn about how tea originated in the world, its history in India and how it evolved in Ooty.
• Here you can also shop garden fresh tea in various packs, Homewood teas, different varieties of oils, spices, homemade chocolates, specially crafted Tea souvenirs including Teacups carrying the museum’s logo and souvenir plates with snippets of the history of Tea engraved on them.
• A lot happens over a cup of tea, and so does where the tea leaves are picked and tea has produced a visit to the Ooty’s Tea Factory and the Tea Museum is worthwhile.