tea and mountains | jefffuchs

Jeff Fuchs

Nov 13, 20223 min read

Tokoname Clay of Seiji Ito's Hands

First day in Japan and already a day 'late'. A day late in meeting a man who has been crafting clay from Tokoname into tea vessels for...

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

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Departure and the Cherub

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Tea That Never Came

Jeff Fuchs

Mar 26, 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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Part Goat and a Little Part Human

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Choices, No Choices, and some Courage

Jeff Fuchs

Mar 7, 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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Tea and Bloodlines

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...

The Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Remnants

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Other Tales and Sight

Jeff Fuchs

Feb 11, 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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Empress of Cloth

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - Way Out, and Out Again

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - There Are No Straight Lines Through the Mountains

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...

Tea Horse Chronicles - Blessings and Warnings

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - A Gathering of Women

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...

Tea Horse Road Chronicles - The Crossing

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 28, 20201 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...

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