Jeff Fuchs

Oct 13, 20241 min read

Our "The Tea Explorer" Documentary is - finally - up on Youtube (with heaps of ads).

Our "The Tea Explorer" Documentary is - finally - up on Youtube (with heaps of ads).

Jeff Fuchs

Sep 4, 20211 min read

Omu, The Strong

Arriving to a new camp and homestead, Omu sets about going through an unending list of ‘musts’. One of the musts is securing tent ‘fly’...

Jeff Fuchs

Aug 17, 20211 min read

Dolma, The Titan

Over the course of a decade of repeated visits to a nomadic community and little Dolma’s clan near Litang, I would continuously be in awe...

Jeff Fuchs

Aug 3, 20211 min read

Leaf Journeys, Leaf Ageing, and the Heights

It was upon the months' long journeys along the Tea Horse Road that the big-leafed 'assamica' material and eternal panacea, tea, would...

Jeff Fuchs

Apr 27, 20211 min read

A Pass, The 'Feel', and Karma's Chai

The mind wanders back to a pass, a blizzard, and that wonderful thing that exists still: instinct. On a day of few words along a portion...

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 21, 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 3, 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

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 23, 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 14, 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 7, 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 5, 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 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 29, 20201 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Crossing

Poignant in this years' end and the arrival of a new time and space. A last vestige of travel across the glacier-fed waterways of the...

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...