Tea comes from a single kind of bush - Camellia sinensis. Pickers, mostly women, walk along the bushes and gently snap off the top two leaves and the bud, dropping them into a basket carried on their backs. They do this for hours, in lines along the hillside.
Tea likes to grow up high, where the air is cool and misty. The best Ceylon tea grows in places like Nuwara Eliya, around 2,000 metres above sea level. The slow growth at that altitude packs more flavour into each leaf.
Sri Lanka grows tea on terraces cut into the hills like staircases for giants. From far away, the whole hillside looks like a green corduroy jumper. The pluckers know which leaves are ready by colour and feel, and they snap exactly the right ones - too many, and the bush won't grow back well.
Once picked, the leaves are dried, rolled, and 'oxidised' (which changes their colour from green to brown). Then they are sorted into grades and packed up. From bush to teabag takes only about 24 hours.