Jeff Fuchs

Apr 2, 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

Mar 9, 20212 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

Feb 27, 20211 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 19, 20211 min read

The Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Remnants

Within the tidy remnants of a former ‘Tea and Horse Trade Office’ in Mingshan County, near Ya’an in Sichuan, Jamyan and I wandered for 25...

Jeff Fuchs

Jan 28, 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 26, 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 2, 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

Dec 30, 20201 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Pluck

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...

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 27, 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 24, 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 21, 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 17, 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 15, 20201 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Shar Gong La (The Eastern Gate Pass)

Upon the Tea Horse Road’s pathways (and there were many), traders, pilgrims, and muleteers alike would refer to the ‘middle route’ as...

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 1, 20202 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Part 1

The coming weeks' posts will delve back into the memory palace of moments from our 7.5 month expedition along the Tea Horse Road, to...