A beverage that is widely consumed, tea is grown extensively in Eastern and Southern India. Most plantations were established during the colonial era and many are still run deeply steeped in the same traditions. Doke, however, is of a more recent vintage and is a family owned estate that lies in the Eastern state of Bihar.
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Named after the river of the same name, Doke flanks its course for a brief distance. Akin to a hermitage, it is a serene spectacle that greets you as you approach this haven. The tea plants make for a magnificent sight, what with a lush green carpet kissing the horizon.

As one pulls onto the dirt road that leads into the estate, one cannot help but wonder what a delight it would be to call this place home. There is not one sound of a honking car, barely any people, and the gentle breeze from the river only endears this place further.

Doke has been administered all along following principles of environmental stewardship since inception and long before terms such as ‘green,’ ‘organic,’ or ‘living off the grid’ became catch phrases. Caught in its own time warp, the essence of this locale is imbibed when one’s desire is for stimuli out of the ordinary. It tempts you to lay back, to introspect, to commune with nature.

Aside from tea, there are also patches dedicated to the farming of fruits and vegetables and for the many who have been mostly urban dwellers, this is opportunity to partake in the simpler pleasures of life.

Read, stroll or merely laze about, Doke has without doubt a calming effect on the senses. As twilight dawns and day yields to darkness, the yearning to continue to spend time here is only stronger. If only other worldly obligations didn’t beckon. If only.

In the meantime, another aspect developed : the promotion of tourism in Bihar which is the designated land of Buddha. This fact attracts tourists from all the Buddhist countries – hard core being from Japan, Korea, Burma, Cambodia, and Thailand.  Most recently devotees from China – which is of large magnitude. The story has to be interwoven for this tea from the land of Buddha – an interesting work.

During the Mughal period,  Kishanganj district was part of Nepal and was known as Nepalgarh. Mughal Emperor Shah Alam appointed Mohammed Raza at Surajapur for administration. Md. Raza captured the fort of Nepalgarh; the name was converted to Alamganj; and administration was shifted to Khagara. The historical “KHAGRA MELA” is held every year at Khagara, Kishanganj.

Doke River

During the period of Khagada Nawab, Mohammed Fakiruddin, one Hindu saint arrived. He was tired and wanted to rest at this place, but when he heard that the place name is Alamganj, the river name is Ramzan, and the Jamindar name is Fakiruddin, he refused to enter at Alamganj. After that, the Nawab decided and announced some portion from Kishanganj Gudri to Ramzan pool gandhi ghat as Krishna-Kunj . As time passed, the name was converted to the present KISHANGANJ.

Neha and the Manager at Doke

“Our goal is to produce tea without harming the eco-system. Therefore, the protection of the air, the water, the soil, and the surrounding animals is our priority. This is why we use solar power and have installed a water management system at the Doke house. At the same time, the well-being of the people who work for us and live on the land is also very important to us.”

Let me tell you the story of the Lochan family. In 1998, after managing several tea gardens for others, father Rajiv Lochan decided it was time for him to get his own. Determined, he bought this 40 hectares piece of land at Doke, where the Doke River flows in the Bihar Region, and started his own tea plantation. Thanks to his experience and knowledge on tea, the company Lochan Tea Ltd has become a remarkable tea trading and producing company.

Sharing the same passion of tea, Rajiv thought that his wife Manisha and his children Neha and Vivek could become part of the Lochan tea adventure. In fact, today Vivek the 26 years old son is responsible of the Sales and the customer relationship. Mother and daughter, Manisha and Neha are managing the Doke Tea garden and constantly working on the taste of their tea. This family business is evolving and will keep evolving thanks to the younger generation Neha and Vivek who always come up with new ideas and rejuvenate the vision of tea.

The Doke River

Growing up in many different tea gardens such as Longview, Phuguri, Seeok, Jungpana and Ambootia, Neha has come to this conclusion: tea is not just a drink, it is a WAY OF LIFE that she today wants to share with tourists who come to visit the garden.

In fact, this is what is understood when going to Doke Tea Garden: tea is not just about pouring hot water into a cup, it’s about taking the time to enjoy the peacefulness and the quietness of the location, listening to the sound of nature and learning from other people.

Indeed, Doke Tea Garden is the most peaceful place. Out there, time has no value, nature takes over.

In order to make the visitors happy and immerse them into the Tea Way of Life, Neha has settled many environmental friendly activities to get people closer to nature. These are the activities you may find at Doke:

• Hand making your own tea from the leaf plucking to the drinkable tea
• Fishing in the Doke River in the local way
• Camping right next to the beautiful lush tea plantations
• Cultivating spices from their own organic spice plantation to have the traditional Masala Chai or to create new blends of tea
• Making pottery in the local way from mud

The garden is however well managed, it has a good shade, and the presence of the river Doke allows to keep certain humidity during dry seasons, in compensation the planting is very sensitive to problems of saturation in water in the soil. For this reason, it is important to set up a system of efficient draining which is not operational today. We can see in this garden that water stagnates in several channels, it has no effect on drainage if it is not losses in water by evaporation in channels.

The most part of these problems should be resolved in next years, the workers will win in experience and become skilled, it is necessary that they become aware that the more they do good quality work, the more their future will be assured. The problems of transport will be resolved by the installation of the factory, this factory will also allow you to produce exactly the type of tea you want. However it will be entirely functional only when the workers will have acquired a certain experience. Your objective is to produce high quality teas such as your white tea the black needle; this production furthermore will have the organic farming certification which should assure you to extract a good added value of your planting.

At 9h30 AM, after travelling by bus, we arrived at the garden.

We first evaluated the damage caused by the storm of the 22/04/2007, which has destroyed Mr Biswakarma’s house. The reconstruction was on the way – some people were working on it.

During the time I was taking picture of the damages, Mr LOCHAN Vivek was checking the employee’s name and age in order to complete the administration requirement of Lochan Tea Limited. Indeed, the government needs to know the name of the persons that are working and their age. A majority of employees didn’t know their date of birth, that’s why we’ve calculated the approximate date from their age.

Then we made a walk around Doke Tea Garden.

Irrigation machine installed, offering now a better capacity

The noun “DOKE” comes from the river of Doke, which runs besides the plantation. Doke’s garden is a 10 years old plantation, spread on 26 hectares. The site employs around 30 people, in a region where unemployment seems to be high. The main advantages for the tea production are the shadow created by the entire tree’s plantation, which mainly protect tea shelves from sun aggressions, and the river has proximity, that feeds the ground field in a regular way, supplying it of water. The tea plant has not suffered from the storm, but at the contrary benefits from its water contribution. One problem is that some part of the exploitation is touched by dryness, testifies the easily visible red spot to them on surface. Even if the irrigation system seems to be generally rightly divided through the field, this damaged could cause deterioration in the tea’s quality.

Three harvests are envisaged during the year. The first one begin the 27/04/2007, 20 persons will plug in the tea during around one week. Then will comes second and third flush. Doke’s plantation is very productive: around 75,000 kg of green tea leaves a year. It takes 4.5kg of leave to make 1 kg of tea, which makes a production of around 16,000 kg of tea. But Lochan Tea Limited holds a high quality policy, that’s why the best tea is selected to assure a greater taste.

A new piece of tea plant is growing

Lochan’s involvement:

One of the great originality of the garden’s sales is the redistribution of the benefice for the Indus Foundation, association for the education of young people. 5 $ of each kilo of Doke tea sold is redistributed to the foundation. Moreover, buyers of Doke’s tea engage themself to give a minimum of one dollar per kg bought. That’s make part of the trade fair engagement of Lochan’s spirit.

I’ve been glad to discover the Doke garden, to see how was the garden, his way of being cultivated, who was working there…but must of all, I have discover a new environment which has nothing to deal from France and what I’ve never seen before, field of bananas trees, pineapple, terms of employment, yield and capacity of the garden…were for me things totally unknown. With the company of Mr Lochan and Biswakarma, I had had the opportunity to ask many questions, as personal as professional, which make this day a very instructive one.

Elizabeth Ray is a agribusiness scholar currently doing an internship in New Delhi. She reached out to Tealet for an opportunity to learn more about the global economics of the Indian Tea industry. She was connected with Rajiv Lochan who manages Doke Tea Garden and Lochan Tea. Elizabeth tells a beautiful story of her experience with the Lochan Family.

Rajiv Lochan

When you first walk into Rajiv Lochan’s office in Siliguri, you are struck by how meticulously arranged his library is. He has hundreds of books on shelves surrounding his desk, and you get the feeling that he’s read most of them. After discussing business, he then might show you to his Tea Sampling room and invite you to try tea from his personal collection. On showcase are tea sets from all around Asia, tea-brewing machines from China, tools and teapots from Japan and London, and, of course, a vast assortment of teas the names and histories of which Rajiv will explain with a delighted and insightful enthusiasm. If you’re extremely lucky, Rajiv might let you try a sample of his favourite Pu’er tea, a specialty Chinese variation which is black, aged for several years, and for a more acquired palate than mine.

Thus went my first hour visiting the Lochan Tea at their head office in Siliguri in West Bengal, India. Although I had done research on the topic, I had had little practical background in the tea industry and only forty-eight hours in the region. When Rajiv hears this, he solemnly shook his head and said “Forty-eight hours is a very short time. Too short. But we shall do what we can.” Abruptly perking up, he called in his daughter Neha “Dolly” Lochan and introduced us. Dolly is Rajiv’s middle child and, as Rajiv proudly proclaimed, the next generation of Lochan Tea growers. She is personable with a smart, snarky sense of humour, obvious despite her shy reluctance to speak English. As Dolly ushered me into the tea tasting room, she said, half-laughingly “You know, I’m never in this office. I’ve been working on a green tea recipe for the past six months, and I’m usually up at our Tea Garden. I go about 3 times a week. That’s where we’re going tomorrow” Dolly showed me to a room with one wall filled with various tea sets from all over the world. We sit down at a desk with a wooden tray, and I presume it – like the rest of the foreign machines and paraphernalia – is specifically used for making tea. Next to the tray is a small cooking apparatus with two hobs, a teapot, and buttons listed in Chinese. “My father’s little souvenir from China,” Dolly smiles dryly. “I broke it the first time I tried to use it.” She carefully selected two cups from the array of tea sets and asked “So what do you want to try?”

Neha Lochan Brewing

Between the two of us, we select five teas to try. The first one, suggested by Rajiv, is an Oolong from their Gardens near the river Doke – or, sensibly called, a Doke Oolong. Dolly pours hot water over the blackened tea leave, and we wait a couple minutes as it brews. The tea tastes like, well, tea to me. Slightly woodsy-bitter with an almost sweet aftertaste. ask Dolly which is her favourite. “You know, I don’t even like tea, really. But there is one I like quite a bit”. Her choice is a Jasmine Green Tea from China, and ends up being one of my favourites as well. In our first round of tea testing, we try the Doke Oolong (which I later try cold, and is fan-freakingtastic), a handmade Darjeeling, a Black Assam, a batch of Dolly’s tester Green Tea, and a Chinese White Tea.

Just as we’re finishing the first round, Dolly’s younger brother finds us. While Dolly cleans the tea set and prepares the next round of tea testing, Vivek “Vicky” Lochan explains he has taken over managing the sales and marketing for Lochan Tea. Vicky is smart, quick young man. He is fluent in English and takes a brotherly joy in correcting Dolly’s English (in response to which Dolly rolls her eyes and yells at him in Hindi). Vicky suggests we try a CTC (i.e., low quality tea) at some point. In the next round of tasting, the three of us sampled the Pu’er (Rajiv’s favourite), a Chinese diet ‘tea’ of herbs, a Chinese Ginseng Black tea in which the leaves are rolled up into small balls, a Jasmine Black Assam, and a CTC. As we’re finishing, Rajiv joins us and gives me a thorough history on the cultivation of the tea plant. True to his passion, Rajiv knows the cannons of tea history, from the plant’s prehistorical evolution to its early usages, migration to Japan, to the plant’s Indian renaissance. We conclude my first day by trying four last teas; a Jasmine Pearl tea, a Genmaicha from Japan, a Chinese Green Tea from the Yuan Provence, and a Green Dragonwell from China.

Doke

Day two started sharply at nine in the morning. Vicky, Dolly, two other workers from Lochan Tea, and I pile into a small SUV and head up to their Tea Garden in Bihar. The journey takes us two hours, little of which I remember (I slept the majority of the drive). The Lochan Tea Garden is located in an area where West Bengal (an Indian state) meets Bihar (another Indian state) which is all near the Nepalese and Bhutan country borders. Darjeeling, the well-known tea producing region, is the next valley over from the Lochan Tea Garden.

Honestly, it is all just as beautiful as you hope. The youthfully green fields of rice, tea, and jute sprawl for miles in every direction. The land is unlike the organised and efficient agriculture fields of Europe and America – the fields are not perfectly manicured but instead bend around the sporadic tree and dilapidated farm vehicle. Everything is bright green and just imperfectly overgrown enough to feel completely healthy. The region is largely used for tea gardens, and the people who populate the area are a mixture of Nepalese, locals from other places in India, “aboriginals”, Bhutanese, and some Chinese. In the River Doke that runs next to the Lochan Tea Garden, locals catch fish in large, square nets and bison bathe in the middle of the day when it is hottest. The Lochan Tea Garden is off a dirt road off a little road off the main road, and the first thing I notice is the lack of ever-present motorbike engines and car horns. The Garden is a series of plots on the Doke River bank, adjacent to pineapple and fallow fields that runs for about a half mile. They have about 15 tea pluckers – almost exclusively older, village women – and four male labourers who work year round. The Lochans hire more during harvest times. When we arrive, the tea pluckers are eating a lunch of dal and naan on picnic blankets next to the tea bushes. Both Dolly and Vicky explain that working with the local community and ensuring the happiness and health of their workers is essential (“Or else, the workers would just move to a large city, and we’d have no one to work for us.”).

Dolly gets to work experimenting with her green tea recipe right away. While the workers in the field have plucked the tea, Dolly carefully shifts through the couch-sized pile of leaves back at the Garden’s “base camp” and selects the youngest buds. Meanwhile, a worker starts a fire in one of the makeshift ovens created specifically for the experiment. Dolly carefully chooses some leaves and creates a pile about the size of a pillow which she then boils. Vicky, like me, has never seen his sister in action. We both sit mystified over the next few hours, snapping pictures while Dolly boils, rolls, dries, and waits for the buds to become tea in front of a hot, coal burning oven. In between watching Dolly work, I am shown the tea bushes, irrigation system, and explained how the Lochans maintain their fields.

Doke

As the Garden is on a riverbank, the Lochan’s rarely use their irrigation system. Usually the natural rain and river provide enough water, and a pipe that is connected to a nearby well is only used in times of serious drought. The favourite moment of my visit happens when I ask about non-organic chemical usage. It was later in the day, and everyone was exhausted. Despite being next to a river, it felt about 40 degree Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and humid. Everyone was sweaty and tired. Dolly in particular was exhausted as tea-making kept her on her feet next to an open oven most of the day. In a rare moment of respite, and Dolly sat slumped down in a plastic chair and absent-mindedly sipped water from a tin cup as she waited for the leaves to be done drying. Vicky and I were likewise sitting, waiting, checking our cameras, and discussing softly about how the Garden impacts the local environment. Although we could hear the children from the village playing in the distance, the subdued pulse of the river, birds chirping overhead, and an occasional motorbike, the afternoon was calm, quiet. Without warning, Dolly perked up. “You know, the way to tell about whether or not a Garden is using pesticides – ” and here she started to speak up as chirps overhead became noticeably louder ” – Is If You Can Hear Birds!” At this point, the birds broke out into a loud fight overhead – “IF YOU CAN’T, IT MEANS EVERYTHING THE BIRDS EAT IS DEAD. THAT MEANS THE GARDEN PROBABLY ISN’T VERY HEALTHY EITHER.”

Neha and Vivek Lochan

At the Lochan Tea Garden, I watched as the workers, dressed in bright orange saris and chatting happily, worked until a truck from a local factory came to pick up the bulk of the leaves around six pm. By this time, there were enough tea leaves to make two huge, king-sized bed (frame included) piles. Men shovelled the batch into the bed of the small pick up truck. The stacked grew higher and higher with tea leaves, and men stood atop the pile and crammed as much in as possible. By the time they were done, tall metal fencing had been added to the sides of the truck bed, making the collection of tea leaves about eight feet high and thick enough to support several grown men. Dolly finished brewing around seven pm as the sun started to set, and we piled back in the car and drove back down to Siliguri. On my final day with the Lochans, Rajiv met with me to answer any left over questions and to show me Darjeeling. My visit occurred while a political strike was in place in Darjeeling, and the local has shut down virtually all businesses and roads for the month. As Rajiv and Vicky drove me up to the periphery closed town, I peppered the two with last minute questions on governmental policies that hinder the business, about the politics of the region, and the future of Lochan Tea. Rajiv was very patient with me and most of my questions were answered with “We go with the flow”. It is this ease with change, this flexibility, and this appreciation for a larger picture that has ensured the twenty-plus-years success of Lochan Tea. What started as a serendipitous opportunity to grow tea the early 90’s has turned into a multigenerational enterprise. The upcoming Lochan tea makers Vicky and Dolly are taking up the reins and playing to their strengths. It is no stretch to say Rajiv is leaving his empire in good hands – all three of his children were literally born on tea gardens and know the industry inside and out. Before dropping me off at the airport, Rajiv, Vicky and I conclude my trip with a taste of the tea Dolly had brewed the day before. Although not quite perfect yet, the tea verges on being that delicate, slightly peaty taste of a quality Green. Given the dedication, knowledge, and passion for tea all the Lochans share, I left without a doubt of its imminent success.

I was tasked with a very simple assignment – to write about holiday teas. There was only one snag. I knew nothing about holiday teas. Most of them were blends, and I rarely talked about those. That and the majority of them contained things like – oh – pumpkin flavoring. Just . . . no.

The only holiday-ish tea-related anything I had any experience with was peppermint. That was the dominant ingredient in candy canes, right? I asked myself. Of course, I couldn’t give myself an answer, and I was too lazy to Google it. Peppermint certainly smelled like candy canes (if it was any good). Then another thought occurred to me . . .

Why don’t I blend with peppermint?

A dangerous prospect, to say the least. Peppermint rarely played well with others. And even when it did cooperate with other ingredients, it had a tendency to dominate the infusion. However, there was one tea in my arsenal that could hold up to – even possibly compliment – the addition of a little bit of peppermint.

Earlier in the week, I received a delivery of Doke Black Fusion (Autumn/Winter Flush 2015) in the mail. It was the third iteration of this particular tea I had tried. Before this, I field-tested the June pluck and the August offering. This was the December picking. Like the others before it, there was a character all its own.
It wasn’t as nutty as the first flush, nor as robust and honey-like as the autumnal. Instead, when I brewed it, I was reminded of a Darjeeling oolong crossed with . . . honey peanut butter-lathered celery sticks. (Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.) Its more herbaceous leanings might compliment the addition of a cooling herb like peppermint. Only one way to find out.

I went with a tablespoon of Black Fusion (the leaves were huge), and scooped barely a trickle of peppermint. A half a teaspoon of the herb, at most; I figured that would give enough of a flavor accent. That and I didn’t want to overshadow the Black Fusion’s smooth delivery.

For brewing, I figured both could take boiling water and a five-minute steep. This iteration of Black Fusion was noticeably subtler than its forebears. It required an extra minute of steep to shine through. Peppermint? It didn’t matter. That sucker could take anything.

The liquor brewed up a shiny crimson – as expected. Black Fusion always did brew to a pretty color. The aroma was all chestnuts and frost, which was semi-encouraging. The taste was odd. It was like Black Fusion was in one corner of a boxing ring, peppermint was in the other, and the two ingredients traded blows for a few seconds. Then they hugged out their differences in a snowfield.

I’m not sure if I can call my attempts at blending a success. My breath smelled like burnt candy canes, though. So, that’s a plus.

Peppermint Black Fusion (finished result)