Region · in Nepal
Ilam
Ilam is where Nepali tea started and it is still the country's largest growing area, pressed against the Darjeeling border in the far east across the Mechi river. Its hills face Darjeeling's, carry the same cultivars and are picked to the same calendar, which has made the district both the natural home of Nepali orthodox tea and the easiest place in the world to buy Darjeeling that is not Darjeeling.
What grows here
Orthodox black tea in flushes is the mainstay, made both on large gardens and by cooperatives of smallholders. Ilam Tea Estate is the country's first and Kanyam and Antu are the district's best-known names, big enough to read as estates in a country otherwise built on cooperatives. Ilam also carries Nepal's most unusual green tea project, around Fikkal, where growers planted Yabukita from Japan next to Darjeeling's AV2 and fitted a small plant with Japanese machinery to make a Japanese-style green tea, which is not what anyone comes to this border for.
What to look for
'Ilam' is used loosely at home as shorthand for eastern Nepali hill tea in general, so leaf from Panchthar, Dhankuta and beyond routinely travels under the name. Treat the district as an address rather than a grade, and note that it covers two quite different producers: the old state-era gardens with their own factories, and the cooperatives that pool smallholder leaf. Which of those made the tea matters more here than the district on the label.
Places in Ilam
Named places inside Ilam. The ones with a page of their own are links.