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Vythiti and Meppadi are areas if you are keen to see some of the tea plantations in Wayanad.

The best time to visit a tea plantation is those post monsoon seasons. Harvesting typically is an early morning affair, much before the sunrise. The tender leaves are manually plucked.

Those sparsely spaced Silver Oaks are essential for the plantation's survival. Tea is a rainfed crop. The efficiency of tea plantation's output depends on the adequate and uniform yearly distribution of rainfall and soil moisture. The Silver Oak does give the shade, but doesn't compete with the tea crop for the soil moisture.

Tea plants are bushy and pruned typically to your midriff level height, making the plucking easy. During the plucking, one will squeeze through the narrow gap between the plants.

Many resorts and home stays arrange plantation tours in Wayanad. It's peculiar Wayanad has plantations of Tea, rubber, coffee and spices, especially cardamom, though they grow in distinctively different soil and environmental conditions.

Of all these plantations, tea estates steals to show, thanks to the spectacular patterns it create on those rolling hills.