The indolent can look forward to evenings on the patio watching fireflies flit through the jet-black sky; curled up by the log fireplace with a book plucked from the bedside nightstand; afternoons by the pool with binoculars searching for Yellow-Billed Babblers, Spotted Doves, Streak-throated woodpeckers and Red-vented Bulbuls.
There are visits to tea factories and waterfalls along roads lined with trumpet flowers and Callias. Drives through cloud-misted mountains through noisy, dusty towns called Somerset, Edinburgh, Clarendon and Sussex. Afternoon tea of Orange Pekoe and a lazy wander through the vegetable gardens, the latter brimming with rhubarb, radish, leeks and celery, all of which end up on the menu that evening.The libraries at each estate deserve mention.
On every metric, driving through the high tea country and staying at tiny hotels like Teardrop is a way of travelling that not many people experience anymore. It’s more Merchant-Ivory slash EM Foster slash 19th-century European Grand Tour than it is millennial. Much of it has to do with time. The distances between each estate means you simply cannot do a whistle-stop tour, making the six-to-nine night trip something of a luxury that few can afford to take. And in this time-pressed world, that is as indulgent and aspirational a holiday as you could possibly get.