Taking a Tea Trip
You may have taken a trip to wine country before or tried a culinary vacation where you learn to cook. But a Tea Vacation is so much more. Tea estates are located in beautiful areas of the world and often provide a vast array of opportunities to learn more about Tea. The locations are often off the beaten path like Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Malaysia or Darjeeling, India, but can also be in areas with other tourist opportunities like Japan.
One example is the Cameron Highlands Resort in Malaysia is offering a tea tour that takes you from the tea bush to the tea cup. With this hands-on approach, you’ll learn quite a bit about tea, but still stay in a luxury resort that everyone can appreciate.
For a more active trip, see Ceylon Tea Trails which gives you the experience of life on a working tea estate. From high tea on, you’ll learn from tea experts how to grow and process Ceylon tea. Or take a trip through Indian tea gardens here. First flush for Indian teas is in April, which makes it a perfect time to visit and many Darjeeling tea estates will allow visitors. Other areas offer this same type of tea experience in Africa for example.
Looking for something closer to home? In the US we have the Wine Country Tea House outside of San Francisco. It’s designed in detail to represent a Japanese tea house.
Enjoying a beautiful tea estate and learning about teas can be a very relaxing vacation - often in a exotically beautiful area of the world. There are also lots of tea estates and historically important tea areas you can visit in Japan and China. So on your next vacation, consider stopping by an actual tea estate for an experience you are not likely to forget.