Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Departure and the Cherub
The final destination along the Tea Horse Road, both for our own expedition and for the great journeys of the past, was Kalimpong, in...
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Jeff Fuchs
- Mar 26, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Tea That Never Came
A simple tea room in Weishan, Yunnan, and one of the only tea rooms in my life that I failed to actually have tea in. Weishan was another...
Jeff Fuchs
- Mar 9, 2021
- 2 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Part Goat and a Little Part Human
Over the course of years since meeting Dorjè I’ve written and pondered much about him. “Part goat and a little part human” was how he was...
Jeff Fuchs
- Mar 7, 2021
- 2 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Choices, No Choices, and some Courage
Ascending up to the Sho La Pass in northwestern Yunnan in May there would always be a chance of weather issues, but it would still be a...
Jeff Fuchs
- Feb 27, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Tea and Bloodlines
On foot our team of four puttered and wandered west (often faintly lost) through the Nyanqen Tanghla mountains in Tibet towards Lhasa....
Jeff Fuchs
- Feb 21, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Chronicles - The Bend
It was here at the ‘first bend of the Yangtze’, at Shigu, in Yunnan province that the Mongolian armies of the Yuan Dynasty crossed the...
Jeff Fuchs
- Feb 11, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Other Tales and Sight
Not all stories of the Tea Horse Road were ones of grand expanses, snow caps, or buzzing tea sessions. A friend from the Yi minority...
Jeff Fuchs
- Feb 3, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Empress of Cloth
Ponzera, or Benzilan as it is now known, is a small valley town in northwestern Yunnan that lies alongside a headwater stream of the...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 28, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Way Out, and Out Again
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...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 26, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - There Are No Straight Lines Through the Mountains
Not heeding the warnings of Sonam Gelek; I should have known better at this stage of our journey than to plunge onwards without his...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 23, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Chronicles - Blessings and Warnings
It was from this patch of grassland near Napa Lake, just north of my home in Dukezong (old town of 'Shangrila') that our expedition...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 14, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Chronicles - Tea's Value
“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...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 7, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Chronicles - The Hostess, The Keeper
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...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 5, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Jokhang Boys
After 52 days of trekking from my then home in Zhongdian (aka: Shangrila/Jiantang/Gyalthang) in northwestern Yunnan, a small celebration...
Jeff Fuchs
- Jan 2, 2021
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - A Gathering of Women
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...
Jeff Fuchs
- Dec 28, 2020
- 1 min
Tea Horse Chronicles - 'The Dorjè'
Immersed in a hotspring that is tucked within a mountain cave, sitting beside the venerable and irrepressible Dorjè Kandro. Just days...
Jeff Fuchs
- Dec 27, 2020
- 1 min
Tea Horse Chronicles - The Fry
Dakpa and I had been rolling around tea forests, tea houses, and tea characters for months at this point along portions and strands of...
Jeff Fuchs
- Dec 24, 2020
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - He Said, She Knew
This ‘moment’ was more accurately a series of moments and most of an afternoon, with an old muleteer and his wife. We interviewed the...
Jeff Fuchs
- Dec 23, 2020
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Tenzin
Legend, guardian of caravans, and hunter of ‘tea thieves’, Tenzin. We had heard of this legend but worried we wouldn’t track him down...
Jeff Fuchs
- Dec 17, 2020
- 1 min
Tea Horse Road Chronicles Continued - A Sanctuary of Leaves
We are engulfed in the ancient tea forest. Damp earth and mushroom smells hit us as Napu walks out in front of us through an entire world...
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