Kanchanjangha Tea Estate and Research Centre

Deepak Prakash Baskota founded Kanchanjangha Tea Estate in 1984, after a visit to Darjeeling's tea gardens at age fifteen convinced him a community-owned plantation could work on the Nepali side of the same mountains. He started with tea plants on his own land in the village of Phidim, in Panchthar district; village skepticism gave way within a few years as neighboring smallholders began pooling their own marginal land into the project, building the estate to its current size on land its own farmers hold a stake in rather than merely work.

The result is Nepal's first certified organic tea garden, verified by the Institute for Marketecology and now also carrying NASAA, JAS, USDA National Organic Program, and Fair Trade (FLO) certification — the only Fair Trade-certified garden in the country. Sitting in the shadow of Kanchenjunga, the world's third-highest peak, at altitudes running from roughly 800 to 2,300 meters, the estate produced Nepal's first certified organic green tea, and its leaf now reaches export shelves as far as Harrods in London. Over 70 percent of its workforce is women.

The estate runs its own tea bars in Kathmandu, at Old Baneshwor and in Thamel, alongside an online shop and a tea-tourism program hosting international students — a cooperative built on one teenager's trip across the border, forty years on.