About

There are few places on the planet that offer up the kind of clarity, pace and stunning insight that tea-stained or mountain rich geographies do. The sacred green and stunning ominous heights are sacrosanct by virtue that they offer up nature-born stimulation and encourage awe all at once. And there are fewer places still that could not benefit from a sip or two of tea or a pulsating mountain-born wind.

Here is a space that exists entirely for the ‘green’ and the ‘heights’ and their influences and abilities to soothe and cleanse. Crucially too, this is a space for the precious people of the land who live within or around these two gifts of the heavens – for it is the people and their tales, their calluses and anecdotes that give lifeblood to all.

Here, a selection of images, interviews, insights and thoughts that deal with tea and mountains – in my mind at least, a sacred life-giving duo.

Why Tea

Tea – A seven-hour all night  tea session (and the ensuing rapture) in a Taiwanese teahouse, my own ‘tea fix’ was fixed. Asia’s great green commodity has (like few other luxuries) soothed, fed and stimulated. Tea holds a vital role as one of the few constants in my life – a constant that has only become more satisfying with time.

Why Mountains

Mountains – Their serene and brutal abilities had been honed into me from years of climbing and wild escapades that began in Switzerland as a child. In the immaculate words of an ancient Himalayan muleteer, “the mountain’s laws are unambiguous, honest and eternal; you either survive it’s challenges with wisdom and strength or you simply perish in its elements”.

About Jeff

Wild China’s 2011 Explorer of the Year.

Having lived for most of the past decade in Asia, my work has contentedly centered on indigenous mountain cultures, oral histories with an obsessive interest in tea. Photos and stories have appeared on three continents in such publications as The Toronto Star, Kyoto Journal, World Geographic, The Spanish Expedition Society, The Earth, Silkroad Foundation, South China Post Newspaper, New Ideas, Outdoor Exploration, Voyage, Outpost, The China Post and Traveler amongst others. Various pieces of photographic work rest in private collections in Europe, North America and Asia.

Happily, I serve as Asian-editor-at-large for Canada’s multi-award-winning, ’2011 Canadian Magazine of the Year’, Outpost Magazine.

As well as having consulted for National Geographic, my recent ‘green union’ with Templar Foods acting as a global Tea Ambassador allows me much selfish time within the tea realms of Asia not simply to slurp but to source. Having led expeditions into the Himalayas it gives me great pleasure to be uniting with Wild China to lead exclusive expeditions along portions of the Ancient Tea Horse Road. Recently National Geographic Traveler named the Tea Horse Road tour I lead with Wild China as one of their “50 Trips of a Lifetime“.

Having spoken to students, universities and organizations in Asia, Europe and North America on tea culture and oral Himalayan narratives I am convinced of both the importance of Asia’s eternal green leaf, tea, and the mighty and not so mighty mountains that rise above so much. This blog gives me a forum to vent about both.

Recently, along with Aurelien and Allen Leftick, I set up Jalam Teas which features limited editions of hand sourced teas from Yunnan province. It is the realization of a slightly obsessive dream to get legitimate teas direct to drinkers who care.

My book ‘The Ancient Tea Horse Road’ – (Penguin-Viking Publishers) detailing my 7.5 month groundbreaking journey traveling and chronicling one of the world’s great (and largely forgotten) trade routes, The Tea Horse Road. The journey allowed me to become the first westerner to have completed the entire route stretching almost six thousand kilometers through the Himalayas a dozen cultures. In this vein, I wish to uncover, retrace and remind of the routes that passed along the surface of this earth.

Home for me in northwestern Yunnan – close to my two ‘needs’, mountains and tea – allows me unbridled access to both.

In May of 2011 myself and Michael Kleinwort undertook a month long exploration by foot  along a previously undocumented nomadic salt route through Qinghai province which not only took the month of May but also got us the ‘Wild China Explorer of the Year’ award for 2011.

This past February (2012), Outpost Magazine, Revo Sunglasses, Mountain Hardwear, GV Snowshoes, and Wild China sponsored myself, Bill Roberts and Roberto Gibbons Gomez on a revisiting expedition (becoming the first documented westerners to do so) along an ancient pilgrimage/trade route. As always my intention as Expedition Leader was to bring these crucial routes to light and give them and the cultures around them some sort of greater perspective. We departed mid-February from here in Shangri-La (my home) and finished up two weeks – and almost 300 km – later. Winter expeditions have the benefits of serenity, ferocious temperatures and a that feeling that you may very well be the only lunatics on the trail. We were luckily, entirely fuelled by tea.

Onwards then…

Link to the Jeff Fuchs homepage

Jeff Fuchs@Wikipedia