The state of Assam, in northeastern India, is flanked on three sides by mountains. Its 33 districts lie mostly in the plain of the Brahmaputra River, which once served as the gateway to this remote region. Reports that tea plants were growing here went largely unheeded by the British until the East India Company lost its monopoly on the Chinese tea trade in the late 1830s and was searching for tea-cultivation options in India, a country it then controlled.
