# 56 Today's Picture 090406

Chewing the fat at the teahouse in the People's Park, Chengdu, Sichuan 2006 ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Tibetan tea, tea cups and blenders

©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

While working on some Tibet articles today I came across this colorful image of lidded teacups, which I took in a village home between Gyantse and Shigatse. Tibetans love their tea as much as the English do and a good cuppa is always offered to any guest. Butter tea is called po cha or cha süma in Tibetan ("churned tea") and su you cha in standard Chinese. It's customary to flick into the air a little tea gathered on your fingertip before drinking. In this way you honor both the gods and your host. 

Two fallacies that many people think are true about Tibetans:

1) "That they prefer their tea with rancid yak butter." Not at all. They prefer fresh butter of the best quality if they can afford it. On the other hand, yak butter has a naturally "gamey" taste to it so bland Lurpak it definitely is not.

2) "That they drink up to 60 or 80 cups of tea per day." Tibetans do drink a lot of tea, but they CANNOT possibly drink 60 - 80 cups of tea a day as some travel writers like to say. Each cup is 2 dl of very filling, thick buttery liquid. Do the math and see that this is just physically impossible. It would mean drinking 12 to 16 liters of liquid a day and a cup of tea every 16 minutes in a 16 hour waking day.  80 healthy sips is more like it, as most Tibetans take a sip then set the cup down, whereupon it is immediately topped up by the ever vigilant host. 

Interesting fact: Most modern Tibetans who have access to electricity churn their butter tea in electric blenders and not in the traditional churns that the nomads use. For large gatherings even a washing machine might be used solely for the purpose of making large quantities of tea! (I've heard that many rural Chinese use their washing machines to wash vegetables.)

And to all you business school smarty-pants out there, the above mentioned blender is the in-thing among Tibetans, a much coveted household object that both rich and poor alike own or want to own. On my street here in the Tibetan section of Chengdu, several shops sell a very basic model and I have seen blenders in every Tibetan home I have visited in recent years. (For some reason all of them seem to be yellow in color.) Some genius saw and interpreted this basic need and marketed it: very smart. This, along with the cheap, common, large thermos - which I will stick my neck out and say is one of the greatest contributions the Chinese have made to Tibetan society as a whole - are consumer goods that obviously made it straight to the heart and needs of the Tibetan people. I also love it when someone figures out a simple, affordable solution that alleviates the daily chores that usually fall on the women of the world. 

Travel tips Darjeeling

Afternoon tea, Windamere, Darjeeling ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

Elevation: Darjeeling: 2123 m. Kalimpong: 1243 m.

Accomodation:
We stayed at the Sonar Bangla, near the Jeep Station, nice and clean and affordable. Many people recommend the Bellevue on Chowrasta. I’d probably try that next time around.

Bookstore:
Oxford Book & Stationary Company, Chowrastra Mall, loads of good books on the region, Buddhism, Tibet and India.

Look out point and naughty monkeys:
Ridgewalk beneath the Windamere.

Afternoon tea:
Windamere Hotel, Jawahar Rd West
Elgin Hotel, HD Lama Rd

Teashop:
Nathmull’s Tea Rooms, Laden La Rd

Photo shop:
Das Studio, Nehru Rd

Cafè:
Glenary’s, Nehru Rd

Recommended reading:

The inheritance of loss, (sv. Bittert arv), Kiran Desai. Story about people and life in a small village near Darjeeling (actually in Kalimpong east of Darjeeling and on the border of Sikkim). Winner of Man Booker Prize 2006.

Darjeeling

Red panda/Mt Kanchenjunga Photo ©Ingrid Booz Morejohn

A short hop, skip and a jump (actually a short flight with Kingfisher Air from Calcutta to Bagdogra near Siliguri in West Bengal) will take you to the foothills of the Himalayas, the tea plantations of Darjeeling and the precipitous roads that lead up to the mountain state of Sikkim. Sikkim has the smallest population of any state in India and is only slightly larger than Goa in size. From north to south it's maybe only 100 km long but because you drive for hours and hours along winding roads with switchback turns the feeling is of a much larger place. Arriving in Darjeeling from the flat Bengal plain the contrast is enormous. Hot, dry flatlands rapidly turn into tea fields and then the up, up, up begins. Along the way you will probably bump into the World Heritage steam "toy train" and make room for it to arduously pass by. You will rapidly overtake it again as it is very slow!

We took a minibus in the rain from Bagdogra Airport and after 4 hours we arrived in Darjeeling, no more the quiet hill station of Raj days but now a bustling market town and center of the local tea industry. Here and there amongst the new concrete buildings old Darjeeling can be glimpsed, sad and droopy but still charming none the less. Old evergreens like the Windamere Hotel and the Elgin still keep up appearances and an Afternoon Tea at one or the other of these is a must. Darjeeling tea is a wondrous brew, all fragrant and light and delicious, not at all as dark and robust and powerful like Assam tea. Tea is sold all over the town, but the best is probably found at Nathmull's.

Darjeeling, like Gangtok, is all ups and downs. After a while your feet start longing for something flat to walk on! A good town walk is up to the Padmaja Naidu Himalyan Zoological Park (to see the red pandas, Indian tigers, Himalayan newts and cloud leopards), then on to the Himalayan Mountain Institute to pay your respects to Tenzing Norgay and look at the museum that honors Mt Everest and mountain climbers. (Paddy visited Darjeeling in the 1950s and remembers sitting as a small boy in Tenzing Norgay’s lap. He and his brothers were then presented with ice axes by Tenzing and Paddy can still remember his warm smile and laugh.) After the museum you can continue up to the walk around the top and hope to get clear views of Kanchenjunga (above). The Big "K" is the world's third highest mountain at 8586 m and is a stunning sight visible from Darjeeling on clear days. (Everest can only be seen from Tiger Hill). Continue through the monkeys grooming themselves in the late day sun and you’ll wind up just about right for Afternoon Tea at the Windamere!