Recently i have visited a local tea garden of Bangladesh. The garden is located in the offshore of a river. Bangladesh is an important tea producing country. Its tea industry dates back to the British rule, when the British East India Company started tea business in Chittagong in 1840. At present, there are 17 commercial tea estates in Bangladesh, some of which are the largest operational tea gardens in the world. The industry produces 3% of the world's tea, and employs 4 million people. After jute, tea is the most exported cash crop in Bangladesh. This industry accounts for 1% of the national GDP. The tea producing districts are Moulvibazar, Habiganj, Sylhet, Chittagong, Panchagarh, Brahmanbaria and Rangamati.
Tea is produced in the northern and eastern districts; Highlands, warm climates, humid and rain prone areas create a fertile ground for high quality tea production. Historically, the Bengal Tea was at the end of the Horse Road, connecting the subcontinent with Yunnan, China's first tea-producing region. Atish Dipankar is considered to be one of the earliest Bengali tea drinkers.
The cultivation of black tea in Bengal started during the British rule. European traders established the subcontinent's first tea garden in the port city of Chittagong in 1840, when Chinese tea trees were brought from the Calcutta Botanical Gardens and planted next to the Chittagong Club. The first tea was made and drunk in 1843 on the banks of river Karnafuli in Chittagong. The Surma river valley in the Sylhet region is known as the center of tea production in East Bengal. Tea cultivation also started in Lower Tripura (now Comilla) and Panchagarh in North Bengal. Panchagarh is the third tea region of Bangladesh and the most sought after tea is produced here.
