Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Fields vs Forests

Posted on February 9, 2021 by JeffFuchs
Blankets and ridges of green stimulant leaf lie in rows near Puerh. Here the leaf is entirely industry. Gorgeous industry, but still industry. Local Hani, Han, Yi, Lahu, and Dai pluckers shimmy through the humid air to pluck, pluck, and pluck some more. My guide here amidst the fields, “Little Rabbit”, mentioned how in his family “only wants to drink tea, not work with tea”. We stood with a 360 degree amphitheatre of young and medium growth bushes around us. Though beautiful, I craved the rampant old growth forests which retain still something of a world beyond simply the commerce of a leaf that I’ll never stop being in love with. There is a quote that I think embodies the world of tea from a tea selling friend of mine in Jinghong, Yunnan,”It is the teas from the messy beauty of the forests that the dedicates crave, rather than the teas from the ‘perfect’ fields”.
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Empress of Cloth

Posted on February 3, 2021 by JeffFuchs
Ponzera, or Benzilan as it is now known, is a small valley town in northwestern Yunnan that lies alongside a headwater stream of the Yangtze River. For its size and population, its contributions to the Tea Horse Road spanned vast and deep. Rhododendron roots carved into butter tea bowls, humour, and some of the better muleteers hailed from this town of heat. Another and more rare commodity was also sourced here: fine stitched fabrics that were coveted in Lhasa and beyond. Sitting with this matron sipping tea, we listened to how her family over generations had been weaving and stitching fabrics for traders to take east to Lhasa. She spoke with a quiet dignity and pride of her lineage and contributions to the great highway through the sky or the ‘Eternal Road’ as some referred to the Tea Horse Road. Auntie Lhamo was riveting and commanding in every micro movement and breath and our team sat around her, enthralled and perhaps in a kind of adoration and love. Majestic, she wasn’t at all surprised that we sought to to meet with her in her home, saying: “You should come to see me. I have the Tea Horse Road in my blood”.
 
Her tea too, was imperious with fresh thick yak butter , with a heavy salt tang, gathered from nearby brine wells. As friend and team member on the expedition would say later, “You can tell much about a person by the tea they serve”. And so, the Empress’ offering mirrored her character perfectly.
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Way Out, and Out Again

Posted on January 29, 2021 by JeffFuchs
Yeshi and I shared tea with this old memory palace of time. Goat milk and butter were used instead of yak variations. The tea was deadly but his memories as he recounted the days of watching caravans along a portion of the Tea Horse Road head south into Bhutan, Nepal, and India were warm and clear. It was such memories that ensured that lifeblood remained in the tale of Tea Horse Road’s legacy. Portions of the physical route remain in small cobbled sections or mere pathways within Yunnan, Sichuan, and upon the Tibetan Plateau, but it is in the telling and listening to the tales that something flickers back to life. He, and his tea, relit some of those flickers.
Portait along the Tea Horse Road
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – There Are No Straight Lines Through the Mountains

Posted on January 26, 2021 by JeffFuchs

Not heeding the warnings of Sonam Gelek; I should have known better at this stage of our journey than to plunge onwards without his counsel…but onwards I plunged. Consistently accurate and intuitive, Sonam had warned against our team traversing a long series of ridges blanketed by snow. I was convinced otherwise, certain that with a pending storm mottling the sky, the time of day, and the weight of our packs, that we needed to try the more direct route. Sonam politely refused and told me to scout out the intended path on my own. A lonely slog up to stop and realize that there are no straight lines through the mountains. I took a couple of heaves of snow-tainted air, forgot about everything – forgot the destination, my own impetuousness, the expedition, everything! Sonam came up saw this, took it in silently, and smiled. We turned and descended but not before being gifted a few moments of that snowscape.

Tea Horse Road - Tea and Mountains

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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Blessings and Warnings

Posted on January 23, 2021 by JeffFuchs
It was from this patch of grassland near Napa Lake, just north of my home in Dukezong (old town of ‘Shangrila’) that our expedition departed. Kit, maps, dried goods, 3 kg’s of Puerh in brick and cake form, and a relief that finally we would actually physically commence a journey that was three years in the making…all of these elements were present. It was a still day of cool, grey nothing and the Tea Horse Road seemed in many ways but a memory in many of the elders minds. No winds, no glowing mountain sun, no anthems, no snow and no partying or grand send off. A slate grey canopy that said little, enveloped everything. At last, before our departure, a last vital: a blessing. It involved a lama and two monks from the local Songtsanling Monastery. Mantras to the protective deities, chanting, gossip, laughs, and heaps of butter tea were shared, before finally some words from the elder of the monks (at far left in yellow tuque) that told of the ‘perils’ of journeys along the Tea Horse Road. Two pieces of advice that sealed this particular moment were: “Don’t fall in love on the route”, and “When in doubt wait. When you are lost in the mountains you must sit and think with your good brain….think!” We would sit and think a lot on the journey, get lost a lot, and fall in love a few times. The monk’s words would clang around in the mind on most days of our 7.5 month journey and this image fixes that moment back into the sacred moment of ‘now’…at least briefly.
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Tea Horse Chronicles – Tea’s Value

Posted on January 14, 2021 by JeffFuchs
“Tea is our everything. I don’t know where it comes from but we take it every day in the morning, afternoon, and night. Our children learn to make it when they are young but we must help them get the taste right”.
Simple words from a nomad and father on the subject of that eternal fuel, tea. Taken at close to 5,000 metres near Shinzhugong, in western Sichuan’s Ganze area the words tell succinctly of the value of a desiccated leaf to a people who count few luxuries.
“With tea and our yak, we are complete”, he would say later.
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Tea Horse Chronicles – The Hostess, The Keeper

Posted on January 7, 2021 by JeffFuchs
A nomadic hostess (nemo) offers up a smile to our sun and grime battered crew near Ala Jagung, Tibet. The smile that comes from living so vitally and so close to Mother Nature’s moods never fails to move the blood. Such hosts and hostesses could ensure that they were shown preference by muleteers along the Tea Horse Road, through their generosity and care-taking abilities. Tea was an offering beyond a simple beverage. It was an adhesive and tribute to a journeyer; it was a promise that with its offering, all was well (at least temporarily). For us, this woman offered up butter tea, disks of homemade barley bread, a happy rant about the weather at close to 5000 metres, and her home. The mountain mantra is and always has been, ‘Cooperate or Perish’, and this was demonstrated time and time again across the expanse of our journey across the Himalayas. Her tent, tea, and smiles would embed themselves in our team’s bones for much of the rest of our journey, even though we would only remain with her for a couple of hours. Her spirit (and tea) raised us, and that smile and energy still rate as some of the better fuel I’ve fed on – ever. It was a brief but intense bit of restoration on our journey.
Himalayan hospitality - Tea
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – Jokhang Boyz

Posted on January 6, 2021 by JeffFuchs

After 52 days of trekking from my then home in Zhongdian (aka: Shangrila/Jiantang/Gyalthang) in northwestern Yunnan, a small celebration (and first shower) is had in Lhasa amidst those who have come from every corner of the Tibetan Plateau to pay homage. Of the three main strands of the Tea Horse Road that coarse through Tibet, we took the central hub. It is the one that remained (at that point at least) the most intact, the most direct, and the most isolated and daunting. Here in the gentle chaos of Barkhor Square, we take a pose in front of the timeless Jokhang Temple. At various times all of these gents were pivotal characters along the journey and in my life. The slim and polite denim-clad Sonam (at far right) belies one of the most ferocious wills and straight up strongmen that I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and journeying with. Amongst this group he was the only one on every one of those 52 days and nights of journeying on the Lhasa portion and he would be a partner on dozens of subsequent mountain journeys. Tireless, authentic, and brutally compassionate, he remains a light amongst it all to this day. From left to right, Yeshi (The Wizard), myself, Dakpa (The Alchemist), Tenzin of Litang, and Sonam Gelek (‘Spiderman’). A rare moment of unity in one place; the journey for Sonam and I to arrive intact embedded Lhasa’s meaning more deeply into the bones than any book or preconception of the place. A good moment that! A couple of short days later Yeshi and I would depart on a winding journey south into Kathmandu and onto Kalimpong, India. The Tea Horse Road (Cha ma gu dao, Gya’lam) journey would not end for another few months.

Tea Horse Road Expedition - Portrait in Lhasa

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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – A Gathering of Women

Posted on January 2, 2021 by JeffFuchs
Nomadic women of Ganze gather on a grassland to take part in a horse festival. It was through and over such high grasslands that the Tea Horse Road moved towards Dzogong, Chamdo, Lhasa and beyond. Nomads and their lands were a vital part of the the route’s core, transversing their lands, and enlisting them for safe passage. Horse festivals were vital stops for caravans as it was here where horses, mules, tea and other commodities could be traded and bartered. They remain to this day, gathering occasions to share and pay homage to the horse and the skillsets needed to manage them. Food, family, and fineries meet for days at a time. On this day, the nomadic community showed up in all of their finery, gleaming with silver, corals, and turquoise as these festivities were in some ways as much about gathering and bonding as they were about horses. In eastern Tibetan regions of Kham, many women braid their hair into 108 separate ‘micro braids’, which references enlightenment and is an auspicious number in Buddhism.
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Tea Horse Road Chronicles – The Pluck

Posted on December 30, 2020 by JeffFuchs

Napu went up the tea tree amid a forest of tea trees, shimmying along a support branch, until she could access the buds and leaves two metres off of the ground. I shimmied up along side her to watch her pluck. In every direction around us in the camp air ancient tea trees spread and wandered in every direction. The tea was the forest and the forest was the tea. Ferns and orchids were intertwined with bamboo clusters, and the smell of loamy soil completed the setting. This wasn’t any perfectly coiffed series of tidy rows of neat tea shrubs. This was a beautiful symphony of bio-dynamic bliss and little minimal human interference. It was very much a moment when words weren’t needed to sum up a divine kind of space for an eternal fuel and commodity.

Plucking tea

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