The boundary between earth and sky are blurred in the mountains overlooking Darjeeling.
MUHAMMAD LILA PHOTOS DARJEELING, India–High in the mountains, Vishnumaya Gurung sings with the clouds at her feet.
"I started doing this when I was 13 years old," she smiles, reaching for another batch of tea leaves.
She picks them with precision. There's something about her. Not quite sure what. Maybe her smile, or maybe the way she plucks the twigs from the plants – over and over again, monotonously, without a single complaint to be heard.
Whatever it is, it's captivating.
I've come here – to the eastern edge of the Himalaya Mountains – in search of the perfect cup of tea. Little did I know I'd find something so much more.
First, a disclosure: I drink at least three cups of tea a day. Green, black, white, steeped, double-double, you name it.
There's something wholesome about taking time out of your busy day to enjoy a good cup.
The Chinese understood it; the British built their afternoons around it. The Japanese even turned it into a ceremony. Amazing, how important boiling water and a few leaves can be.
Ask any tea connoisseur where to find the world's best tea, and nine out of 10 will tell you to go to Darjeeling.
At 2,200 metres above sea level, the mineral-rich mountain soil is said to produce the "champagne" of the world's teas.
It all started around 1835. The British East India Company leased the land from the Chogyal (or ruler) of Sikkim in order to build a sanitarium, a place for sick British soldiers to escape the relentless heat of India's summers.
But there was money to be made in these hills.
In 1841, the sanitarium's first director, a surgeon named Arthur Campbell, planted in his backyard a few tea seeds he'd gotten from China. The plants blossomed. Other planters followed suit, and the rest is history.
Today, Darjeeling is home to about 80 tea estates. Visually, they are striking: Rows and rows of green bushes stretch out over rolling hills as far as the eye can see.
With the snow-capped peak of Mount Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, in the distance, it's the kind of place you make a postcard out of – or, in my case, use as your Facebook profile pic.
"Good evening, Mr. Lila" a young Indian chap with a British accent greets me as I arrive at the Windamere Hotel, a heritage property in the heart of town.
For a true, high afternoon tea experience, I think I've chosen the right place. There's a piano in the central dining hall, antique furniture everywhere, and the daily menu is still printed with an old-fashioned typewriter.
When I get to my room, there's already a wood fire crackling in the fireplace. A note near the telephone says their phone lines stopped working several decades ago, and they haven't been able to fix them.
This place isn't just a throwback to the early 20th century. It is the early 20th century.
"The best tea should always be an amber colour," explains the Windamere's owner, Sherab Tenduf La, chatting with me in one of the hotel's reading rooms.
"As it steeps, you can see the tea leaf opening up, and the character of each leaf comes out. It should always be drunk straight, never with milk, and sniffed before you sip."
Sniffed, eh? I guess he'd know. Tea is such a big part of the Windamere experience. It's served with every meal, except between lunch and dinner, when it becomes the meal itself.
The following day, I make my way down to the dining hall, promptly at 3 p.m. When the waiter arrives, I blurt out the line I'd been rehearsing for weeks.
"I'd like afternoon tea, please."
Soon, the waiter arrives with a tray full of goodies. A pot of steaming water, warm milk and sugar – all served in fine silver. Fresh scones? Check. Marmalade and whipped cream? Check. Perfectly steeped golden tea with a hint of floral aroma? Double check.
I pause, take a big whiff, and sip. Not a big one, just enough to let the warm, silky liquid dance on my tongue. It trickles down my throat. It was the most expensive cup of tea I've ever had. All it cost me was a trip to the Himalayas, and a five-hour trek up the mountainside.
And it left me, strangely, unsatisfied.
I needed to get to the source.
"This is it," my guide, Paras Dahal says the following morning.
We've made the half-hour drive to a two-storey warehouse-like building on a plateau overlooking town. A sign outside reads: The Happy Valley Tea Estate.
We enter to see a group of Nepali tea-pickers – all women, all wearing ankle-length dresses with aprons and floral shawls – lining up to weigh their day's catch.
"How much do you think they make?" Dahal asks me.
I don't like where this is going.
"The equivalent of $1.50 a day," he continues.
"Most of them have to walk eight, sometimes 10 kilometres a day to pick the tea leaves."
After a quick tour of the tea factory, Dahal takes me outside and introduces me to Gurung.
She tells me about her life, about trying to raise three children on her tea-picker's salary, about waking up at 4 a.m. every morning to make food for the family, about how only one of her children goes to school because they can't afford to send the others.
"Stop telling me this," I keep thinking to myself.
But it was too late. The next morning at breakfast, I sat staring at my tea cup for a long, long time. As travellers, we face important decisions every day. This was mine.
To drink, or to not drink.
Everything was perfect. From the million-dollar views of the mountains, to the quaintness of the heritage hotel, to the genuine smiles from the locals. I'd come here in search of the perfect cup of tea, and I found it.
It took a 60-year-old woman I'd never met to show me something greater: my conscience. And I'll always love Darjeeling for it, even if I do take a pass on the tea.
Muhammad Lila is a Toronto correspondent for CBC News: The National.