Tea plantation

I had been trying to visit the northernmost tea plantation in the world for a while. You may wonder what the difficulties associated with this desire may be as I’m sure all of us have a friend-historian or a friend-tourist who can easily point us in the right direction. But, you see, the bottom line is no-one was terribly specific when it came to finding this place. They had all certainly heard of some place close to some hill somewhere around over there but the detailed directions were either missing or were way too ambiguous. So anyways for a long time no-one could tell me exactly where this place may be.

For about a month I was asking the visitors of poi.uzhgorod.ua to give me a hand with this, I asked around among many of my friends, and I even emailed a few people in the Mukachevo region, all without much success at all. The results were very much confusing to say the least with different people just pointing to the totally different parts of the map. Finally, I got in touch with some forest rangers. They, in turn, contacted their colleagues in Mukachevo and after some time this was the answer I ended up with: “when you see our billboard on a highway, just keep going passed it until you hit a construction company and it’s just above their site up on the hills that you can find the plantation. I mean thank you very much, it’s no different than trying to direct someone who’s never been to Uzhgorod to the hotel “Uzhgorod” by saying look you see there’s a bridge in our city, and somewhere around it, more like on the left, there’s a hotel named “Uzhgorod”. And so again I had to ask around some more trying to put all of the pieces of this puzzle together.

Finally, one morning, I just got fed up and decided to find the plantation myself. I got into my car and headed to the region where the plantation is supposed to be. The first two hours were spent just driving back and forth between the village of Lavki and Mukachevo (4-5 km)…this is about for 8-10 times. I must’ve asked over twenty people for the directions but the answers varied quite drastically. I was directed to search behind the stadium, to have a look on a nearby mountain, and to even check out the village of Langer. Finally, I came across a local elderly who swore he’d been to the plantation a gazillion times before. He’d gladly agreed to show me the way in exchange for a little it bit of liquour. I don’t think my car has ever been in such boonies during its life time. The man continued to navigate us straight into a dead end. We decided to seek some help at a house at the very end of a road but the owner only looked at us as though we were out of our minds and added that we were heading in the totally wrong direction.

As we were on the way again, moving along a god forsaken country road winding through the vineyards, occasionally my car was scratching the ground with its bottom. And…again this didn’t turn out to be the right way. At this point, quite frankly, I considered kicking the man out and leaving him in the middle of nowhere all by himself. The only thing that perhaps stopped me was the fact that the dude was seriously underdressed for the weather. I guess he must’ve been worried the liquour might be slipping out of his hands as he suggested asking for help one of the local �?aboriginals’. (I remember being surprised to hear him use this word because in my mind he, himself, was as �?aboriginal’ as they get).

We’re arriving at the destination at the outskirts of the village. The �?aboriginal’ offers us some home made tea but we refuse and for a shot of liquour he gives us precise directions accompanied with some additional descriptions. Looking at my local �?companion’ I’m convinced he didn’t understand a damn thing. We park outside of the village and start hiking up the hill. After about three kilometers of wandering around the woods, the hopes were running thin again. I saw no signs of the plantation and not only that but it had appeared to me also, my navigator was following a totally different route than what had been described to us. Once in a while, he would stop, point at the bushes of blackberry and say: “I’m sure this is our dear plantation my friend”. I wouldn’t agree easily and we continued our hike. After a while, he would stop again. “No, that’s not it”, I’d tell him “those are the vineyards bro”. And so on for another half an hour until I took the initiative to change the direction of our expedition by a hundred and eighty degrees. He wasn’t necessarily happy about this one but he’d follow me occasionally complaining for another kilometer or so. Finally, we’ve reached the region of the forest which somewhat matched the description. I cross-checked the coordinates with the satellite using my palm pilot and I remember the dude crossing himself at this point. Another kilometer and it seems we’re so close I can almost smell the victory, although the direction of this odour is coming from isn’t yet clear. The electronics came to help here once again and a closer look using Google Maps revealed another open area nearby. It took another five minutes to get there and this is where the �?partner’ started to loose faith. I doubt we’ll ever find the plantation” he says with frustration in his voice. “Just take a look at the ground” I try to calm him down. He spits out a few swear words as he looks around. At this point we’re standing in the middle of the Transcarpathian plantation of tea. I can’t help a smile on my face but at the same time the elderly local annoys me big time and I’d really like to lose him. He puts a price tag on his �?help’ of 200 to 300 hryvnyas, although he adds “I’ll take what you can give me”. I’m a bit shocked but I give him 20 hryvnyas and after taking the cash he’s insisting on writing down his number in case “the services are required in the future”. After a convincing “NO” he stumbles towards the forest but again not even remotely in the right direction. Finally, after I show him the right path, he disappears in the woods.



A few words about the actual plantation:

The world’s northernmost plantation is almost 60 years old and is found in the suburbs of Mukachevo. In 1949, Joseph Stalin has ordered the Soviet scientists to come up with the techniques, which would allow tropical plants to thrive in the Northern climates and vice versa. Headed by the world renowned professor Victor Sochava, the scientists had chosen Transcarpathia to grow some citrus plants along with the tea plants and the eucalypti. The cost of the program was close to 10 million rubles. Out of all the things planned, only the tea plantation found on the Krasnaya Gorka near Mukachevo can be considered a success. The original area of the plantation was about 2 hectares. Georgian, Indian, Ceylon, and other types of tea plant seedlings were planted here. All together six plantations were planted in various climatic micro-zones of Transcarpathian region but only this one had “survived”. The third year after the initial planting, 1.3 tons of the tea leaves were collected just from one hectare. Even during the Soviet times, the responsibity to manage the plantation was tossed around from one governmental department to another and after the collapse of the USSR, the plantation has experienced its own collapse. The locals were digging the plants out not realizing these cannot be planted elsewhere (as the plants die immediately). They relentlessly harvested the leaves and after drying them out distributed them on the local markets as the anti-cancer remedies. Presently, the plantation is infested with the bushes of blackberry and weeds in spite of the recent efforts to tidy it up.

While taking the photographs of the plantation, I also noticed the sign “Caves”. I got filled with excitement and moved in the direction the arrow was pointing to. The flora around me was very interesting.



A few kilometers later and I found the “caves”







About the “caves”:

A network of about ten caves is nothing more than the old vineyard storage space dug out in the limestone of the mountain. Only one part of the caves is accessible to the public while the other one is fenced off and it looks like some construction is about to begin there. Across the entrance to the caves there’s a tiny lake. It may be an artificial one by the looks of it. Basically, it’s a tourist trap which is being actively used by all the tourist agencies of Mukachevo.

So, all in all. Driving – 3 hours, walking – 3 hours, at the spot – half an hour, time spent on the computer to add the �?POI” with the description to the website – 1 hour, preparing the PLT files with the routes – 40 minutes, preparing the WPT files for the routes – 30 minutes, preparation of the map with the routes – 30 minutes, picture processing – 45 minutes. In summary it is 9.5 hours and 4 of them spent out in the wild on a wet, cold, windy day. That’s not even taking into the account the time used to write this up, which can easily take another hour and a half.

05.10.2010. 07:50

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