A tea house in Calcutta

Siliguri, July 18: From trade to tea, China seems to be the flavour of the month.

After the reopening of Nathu-la, it is time for a tea house in Gangtok offering its patrons a ?Chinese ambience?.

Named after a mountain range in China, Wu Yi Shan is the brainchild of the Siliguri-based Lochan Tea Industries, which has tied up with an entrepreneur from Sikkim for the project. The first-of-its-kind tea house in the region will be inaugurated in the Deorali area of Gangtok next Friday, sources said.

?We are banking on the rise in tourist flow to Gangtok after the opening of Nathu-la. And with the prospect of Chinese traders entering Sikkim through the pass, we thought of opening a tea house with a Chinese ambience,? said Ujjwal Pratap Gahatraj, the entrepreneur from Sikkim, over phone from Gangtok. Gahatraj has invested around Rs 15 lakh for the project.

The establishment will showcase around 150 varieties of tea from domestic and international brew belts like Darjeeling, China, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Argentina and Sri Lanka. It will have a display section where visitors can check out samples of tea leaf through catalogues and books depicting their history, taste them and buy.

?We will have on offer offbeat varieties like mint tea, herbal tea, masala tea, Comomile from Egypt, along with the orthodox Indian tea,? said managing director of the Lochan group Rajiv Lochan.

?We will also have a restaurant where snacks will be served,? Gahatraj said. The restaurant, said Lochan, will be a 30-ft affair, where people can ?have food, drink tea and enjoy the beauty of the hills.?

The Lochan group will act as a consultant to Gahatraj?s project. ?We will provide tea, necessary crockery and other accessories for the Chinese theme setting,? Lochan said.

The Lochan group had, in May last year, declared that they would open tea parlours in Siliguri, Darjeeling, Calcutta, Delhi and Hyderabad. None of this, however, materialised.

?In Gangtok, though, we are positive that the concept will be a hit,? Lochan said.