India Week 1 - 2: As most of China was enjoying a couple of days of national holiday last week, I decided it would be best to join them and spent a few days in the metropolis of Shanghai.

It again put into sharp relief the past and present in the country, as you look out from the pre-war Bund, with its Art Deco banks representing an era when foreign powers dominated this part of China, across to the new Pudong area where the skyscrapers dominate the skyline proclaiming a new era of Chinese self-confidence. With the Beijing Olympics dominating the headlines, there has been much talk of a power shift from West to East, and this is not confined to China so even though my flight took me in a South Westerly direction, I was moving on to the other rising superpower of the East - India.

In political and economic terms China and India have much in common, with populations of over 1 billion, growing industry, increasing wealth and rising standards of living.  However, they are also both Superpowers in the world of tea, standing at first and second positions respectively in the world production rankings.

I have started what will be a twelve week stint on the sub-continent, in the South Indian province of Kerala, more specifically the port of Cochin. I'm being hosted by our friends at Tata Tea - as our parent company, it makes this another visit to the ‘relatives'. Like our teams in Kenya and Malawi, Ravi and Vinu in the Tata Tea office are responsible for buying the teas we need from this region for our Tetley blends. However, this is not their only buying as Tata Tea is now the biggest tea brand in India, there's plenty of tea to source for the growing local market. Therefore there was much to learn, and on my first day it was straight to the tasting room. After the very different ways of looking at tea in China, I was back on familiar territory as we prepared to slurp a long counter of black teas, all with milk, ready for the forthcoming auction.

The auction takes place over two days, with the smaller ‘dust' types on Tuesday and the larger ‘leaf' sale on Wednesday. The smaller teas are popular with local buyers as in South India the consumer prefers a strong, quick infusing brew. The ‘leaf' sale tends to be more for export to the Middle East and Russia.

It was with a sense of déjà-vu that I headed with Vinu to the Cochin Tea Trade Association auction centre, and the familiar sight of the lecture-theatre style auction room greeted me. However similar it initially may have seemed to my weekly trips to the sale in Mombasa I was soon shaken out of my reverie. The plum seats at the front of the auction room are at a premium, so I was forced to observe Vinu in action from the back of the room. I must admit, that despite my experience of auctions in recent months, I found it hard to keep up. The lots are sold at a prescribed rate of four and a half per minute, with each broker allotted a certain amount of time to sell his catalogue - if the clock runs out beforehand he has to make way for the next seller. This makes for a fast-moving sale, and requires the buyers to be sharp if they want to meet their requirement. The most popular teas were made evident by the clamour to buy them, as half a dozen buyers simultaneously leapt from their seats shouting. One buyer had a particularly individual shout which sounded a bit like someone standing on the tail of a terrier. However, any way to get the attention of the auctioneer is clearly necessary in such a competitive environment.

As if two auction days weren't enough we headed inland on Friday and over the State border into Tamil Nadu, to one of the other auction centres of Coimbatore. We were due to go up the previous evening but there was nowhere to stay as a dentists' conference had taken up all the spare hotel rooms. After a 5am start and three and a half hours on very bumpy roads we made it to the Manchester of Southern India - though I looked around for a football stadium or a shipping canal, I was unable to see the link. Vinu explained that Coimbatore is so called on account of its textile industry, which was evident in the colourful shops that lined the chaotic streets.

The auction again took the familiar pattern, fast bidding, clamouring for lots. I was starting to flag after four hours of trying to keep up with the sale, and was relieved to discover there would be a lunch break. This meant a chance to enjoy a Southern Indian speciality - dosa. The dosa is a local kind of pancake, which is often filled with vegetables and makes a quick and filling dish - just what's needed to keep you going through an afternoon in the auction room.

Week 3: It's been a hot week here in Cochin and the tasting room is no exception...

With the offerings for the coming sales in Cochin, Coonoor and Coimbatore to be tasted, the Tata Tea team here at Cochin have their work cut out to get it all done. This means that Ravi and Vinu need to taste over 600 teas a day between them. As the temperature outside shoots past a very humid 30 degrees centigrade, most offices in the city are now oases of modern air-conditioning. However there have been a few technical problems in the tasting room here, making the atmosphere more like that of a sauna. The counter of teas for tasting stretches around the room, and as you approach the corner where the one air-conditioning unit is still working, there is a temptation to dwell by the nearest tray and spend a little more time than necessary grading those samples before crossing back into the oven-like ambience of the rest of the room. However, the tea must be tasted if you're to get through the entire auction offering (plus other private offer samples), and the tea makers here are sharp indeed. As you reach the end of one tray, check the leaf, slurp, give comments, it's whipped away and the next set of pots and bowls put in place. If you're going to taste that many teas I one working day, this is the kind of efficiency required - a true test of accuracy and pace for the taster.

Over the weekend there was a chance to take some time out of the city, so Vinu and I headed into the hills to visit his cousin's cardamom plantation. As cardamom is often added as flavouring to tea it seemed like a very appropriate trip to make. The route to the plantation took us through Munnar, which is one of the key tea growing areas in South India, and is also becoming an important tourist spot. Along the road there are billboards advertising hotels of varying degrees of luxuriousness, often depicted in verdant tea fields. Although the hotels themselves may have been architecturally anonymous, the real views of the tea gardens, set among the boulders and mountains, were spectacular. I should be back in Munnar to look at the estates in a couple of weeks, but this weekend we were heading over the hills to cardamom country.

The plantation itself was a little off the beaten track, so we had to wait for our transport in a village on the (relatively) main road, over 140 km from Cochin, in the heart of ‘real Kerala' as Vinu called it. Therefore this was a good opportunity to patronise one of the local tea shops and taste ‘real Kerala' tea. It was brewed before our eyes, using fine dust tea, which delivers the strength the locals love, quickly, along with plenty of hot milk and sugar. It was a far cry from the delicate oolong tea ceremony I saw in Fujian last month, but still required a great deal of skill and dexterity, as the tea maker strained the liquid through a cloth then poured the tea from pot to glass from a height of four feet without spilling a single drop.

Our transport arrived in the shape of a very rugged Indian jeep. This was clearly the right choice of transport as we left the main road and took the rough stone track to the plantation. Vinu was certainly relieved to have left his own car parked in the village. On the plantation we stayed above the cardamom drying house. Even though the season is yet to start, the rich aroma of the spice seemed to have soaked into the beams of the building. Before nightfall, Vinu's cousin showed us around the forest, where the cardamom plants grow beneath the trees. Although we were miles from the noise of the city, for the hour or so before dark, it was far from peaceful as the crickets and other insects filled the air with sound.

In the forest around the plantation there's plenty of other wildlife, some of which is edible, as we found out on our return from our trip when we were served quail curry back at the mill - definitely a first for me. After a night in the wilds we headed back to the coast where we were guests of a colleague of Ravi for dinner. We were treated to a selection of traditional Kerala dishes including different kinds of fish and prawns in spicy sauces accompanied by the favourite staple of tapioca, followed with ada - a steamed, stuffed pancake, wrapped in a banana leaf. After such a fantastic array of aromas and flavours over the weekend I was left wondering if I'd be able to taste tea in the same way again. I suppose the answer is both yes and no, my taste buds are very much intact, but there is now a range of new tastes stowed away in my personal tasting library.

Next week I'm going to see how our friends at Tata get the tea to the thirsty Keralan population...