A closer look
Drinking your morning Earl Grey hits different when you wake up in the literal clouds where the leaves were plucked. Hidden in the steep, mist-shrouded ridges of Darjeeling, India, the Makaibari Tea Estate invites travelers into the actual homes of the local tea pluckers. Instead of a sterile hotel, you get an unvarnished look at a 160-year-old biodynamic farming community. You eat family meals by the fire, wake up to sweeping views of the Himalayas, and learn the agonizingly precise art of plucking the legendary "two leaves and a bud." It completely ruins supermarket tea bags for you, but the cultural immersion is absolutely worth the snobbery.
