Paris Tea Festival

Honoured to be speaking (and sipping) at the 2025 Paris Tea Festival. Will have pots and leaves along for the trip and will focus my...

Jeff Fuchs

Apr 141 min read

Expedition Update - Departures

The concept of a ‘departure' has all changed since Sebastian’s arrival into our little orbit. Now a departure isn’t simply an exciting...

Jeff Fuchs

Oct 5, 20231 min read

Tsetan - Tea Horse Road Trader

We sat in the dark gloom of his home, with a bit of lukewarm butter tea roaming around our hands. Another of the remaining legends of the...

Jeff Fuchs

Sep 27, 20221 min read

Tseba, his Tea, and the Walk(s)

One of the most purpose-driven of walkers, Tseba, would prepare a kettle of butter tea every morning before leaving to circumambulate...

Jeff Fuchs

Aug 14, 20222 min read

Latest 'Tea Sessions' Column

Few mortals provide (and have provided) as much leaf pleasure as the immortal Karma. Over years and expeditions, he has alchemized his...

Jeff Fuchs

Jul 3, 20211 min read

Pomo - The Girl Who Could Do it All

'Cheshi' in the early morning in her family’s nomadic camp of Shin’zhu’gong at close to 5000 metres. I continually messed up her name,...

Jeff Fuchs

Jun 30, 20211 min read

The Goddess and the Butter

Her’s was the last tent in the windblown nomadic community of Ala Dhotok (Stone Roof), before we headed up the snow pass of Nup Gong La....

Jeff Fuchs

Jun 9, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - He Was Late

The horseman assured Sonam and our team that he would appear at 7am sharp the next morning. He promised over several cups of tea, and...

Jeff Fuchs

Apr 20, 20211 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Walks and Words

“When you walk through mountains, you appreciate any arrival. When you walk to a place, you can speak about a place”. An interview about...

Jeff Fuchs

Apr 10, 20211 min read

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 - 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 - 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 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 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 - Lhakpa

Always, it seems that it was the mountain mornings and its still clear cold that would offer up moments and characters along our journey....

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 21, 20201 min read