Tripura’s tea gardens of the hills: a lesser-known brew finds its market

The tea gardens of Dhalai district, planted in the 1960s and long treated as a poor cousin of Assam’s estates, are finding a new identity: high-altitude, single-estate brews that buyers compare, generously, to Darjeeling.

A cooperative of small growers has invested in withering and rolling equipment, and the first export lot left for the Gulf last year.

The gardens are small — a few hundred hectares — which is precisely their charm.