kericho tea plantations

I traveled to Kericho on a mission trip in September 2012 and instantly fell in love with Kenya. The tea plantations are beautiful and go for miles in this city located on the equator. We visited one of the tea factories and learned how the tea is made. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I cannot wait to visit Kericho again!

Full of greenery, beautiful mountains, Clouds touching the gardens, Memorable trip . Lacks good hotel accomodation

This tour culminated 6 days in Kericho after having spent 5 days as missionaries for a free eye clinic in Kericho. The tour was for our small group of 8 only & arranged by a board member. No photos allowed once we were inside the processing factory and we wore white lab coats & hairnets because it was a food processing plant. We got the whole story from the planting of the tea seedlings to harvesting to the step-by-step processing into tea packaged for export. All questions along the way were answered by our extremely knowledgeable guide, a supervisor of the plant. If you find yourself in Kericho for any reason, this is a must-see operation because tea is the largest industry in this area of Kenya. At the end of the tour we had cuppas of Finlay's finest black tea accompanied by ginger snap biscuits. What a wonderful treat! Thank you, Wilson, for arranging this! (Don't know if there is a fee for this as our group was given the tour free.)

We visited the tea plantations at the back of the Tea Hotel and got a guide from the hotel (by asking at reception - fee 200 shillings per person). The guide was very knowledgeable and it was nice to walk around the plantations.

We visited the Momul Tea Plantations and Factory close to Kericho on a day trip with Integritour (www.integritour.com). The Momul family have been growing tea for almost 100 years, and are members of the Rainforest Alliance, supplying tea to Yorkshire Tea (a distinctive UK brand) amongst others.It was slightly comical to don white overalls and hats and be warned not to touch anything, but we soon were watching the process at very close quarters of drying the leaves and chopping them, removing fibres and seeing the difference between the various grades of tea leaves. We ended our factory visit by visiting the quality control laboratory and tasting several different brews, none of which seemed to resemble what we are used to drinking .... perhaps it was due to the fact that the tea was strong, milk-less and COLD!We also visited the plantations, standing hip deep in tea bushes and trying nonchalently to remove the top two leaves (tips) with the same grace as the locals. We failed miserably especially as this sort of work is piece work with an average of 60 kg being picked each day per person; this is hard work especially under the Kenyan sun, but the benefits to the workers are substantial ... we saw the neat rows of housing in lawned compounds, and plenty of schools and health centres for the employees and their families.We also visited the local arboretum with amazing bamboo trees and exhuberant but timid monkeys.Lunch at the Tea Hotel was a bit of a disappointment. The building still looks impressive from the outside, and the gardens are marvellous, but inside the wallpaper is faded and peeling and there is no longer the 'buzz' nor enough people to fill the large colonial rooms.We did get a short time in Kericho centre - lively and bustling ........ and excellent cups of tea with milk. Having brought home local tea, we are enjoying our Kericho memories on a daily basis, and appreciate how much hard work went into preparing the raw ingredient that makes up such an essential part of our everyday home life!