Destiny

Everybody has a ultimate resting place at the end of his life and mine is Doke 🦆 Bihar 🍵🌱🌳🦜🍃🇮🇳❤️💦

It was in 1998 when Bihar government invited entrepreneurs to start tea plantations to take care of human migration from the parched lands of Purvanchal or far north-east corner adjoining Nepal and Bengal on its Northern and Eastern boundaries.

We started planting tea in Jharkhoda village of Haldibari mauza of Pothia block of Kishanganj district on the banks of Doke river in 1998 July and started making tea in 2014 once land grabbing happened to stabilize it’s economy. Now to improve its quality to meet its international recognition we are shifting there.

Now certified organic and fully mist-irrigated by government support to take care of lack of water and Doke flowing full brimmed from the discharge of a low head turbine put into an irrigation canal of Teesta river.

We have DHR – Darjeeling Himalayan Railway – passing thru our tea garden 😀

And it nestles below Kanchenjunga which is very easily visible from Doke ❤️ – an abode of Gods 🙏.

It is leaf which is converted into tea by evaporating moisture in it – normally cells are broken to dry cell sap and develop chemicals desired in the resultant brew by adding moisture again.

Soil, water and air control this and a fine tuning of the process thus followed gives health benefits. You have to recognise your leaf to do this judiciously.

While this sound so simple it is most complex and you need a total co-ordination of natural elements surrounding your location. Every conceivable famous tea took hundreds of years to develop – I roamed in tea countries only for less than fifty years to get involved with this business which turned into an art.

It was my destiny that I have them the best – all set right to please the consumer. I feel so lucky 🙏.  Both Fengshui and Vastu are ingrained in toto at Doke.

In 2012 we had a major reshuffle in our business where we had to redraw our operations and Doke stood as rock to support us all 👍

This place has been barren since ages as the dry river channel which used to get active only from underground water arrangements of winter water hydraulic pressure mechanism of Teesta river bed topography which made Doke to take it’s rise in Baikunthpur forest near Siliguri – almost 75 kilometers away – so at our spot it was virtually a dry river bed and almost nothing was available to the crops being grown around.

This gave us an opportunity to plant tea under a “Non-traditional tea growing area” status from a Central government licencing authority controlling tea in India called Tea Board. And in 2021 Bihar government came forward to help us all while trying to promote agriculture in this area with various promotional schemes.

Fr. Jellichi blessed Doke when he visited it during its early years of inception and planted a tea tree which is bearing seeds which are distributed all over the world to spread the word of tea. Fr. Jellichi died in 2010 and now immortalized in Mirik where he built a Don Bosco school for the local students.

2010年开始，公司把金骏眉带动茶农致富的经验推广到全国各大茶区，输出创新红茶生产加工技术——骏眉工艺，主动响应党中央“精准扶贫”号召，发展生态茶产业，为贫困茶区脱贫致富贡献了正山力量。

Destiny has it that I have been associated with this above narrative – it is said that history repeats. I have purposely not translated the above text for the reason that only interested people will find the parallel very interesting and important in our context.

The purpose of tea plantations in Bihar was poverty eradication and we strive to do that by paying better wages and providing better education while government is trying to provide good infrastructure.

Maybe it is miles to go and the work yet to be done on that area need time and energy for which a healthy living is needed out of the weather element there.

Return of the native – Love of Life 爱 · 生活 （Ài · Shēng Huó). I will be doing what I had thought of doing all my life – tea 😂. Creating teas and bringing out the best from the leaf.

Sigauli treaty of 1816 between British and Gorkhas lead to repositioning of these lands from Nepal to India and became a part of Purnia commissionary of Bihar. This makes Doke tea to be more interesting.

Dan Bolton has been associated with us since the beginning of Bihar tea and it was a great honour when he covered the whole movement in his Tea-biz publication.

Bihar launched a logo for this tea and honoured us for our work on establishment of this industry. Tea from the land of Buddha is the core massage conveyed by this artwork. It took us sixteen hundred years since first traveller Xuanzang arrived here in 629 CE.