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...

Jeff Fuchs

Apr 2, 20211 min read

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 26, 20211 min read

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 9, 20212 min read

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

Mar 7, 20212 min read

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 27, 20211 min read

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 21, 20211 min read

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 11, 20211 min read

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

Feb 3, 20211 min read

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 28, 20211 min read

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 26, 20211 min read

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 23, 20211 min read

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 14, 20211 min read

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 7, 20211 min read

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 5, 20211 min read

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

Jan 2, 20211 min read

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 28, 20201 min read

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 27, 20201 min read

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 24, 20201 min read

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 23, 20201 min read

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...

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 17, 20201 min read