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...

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...

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 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 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 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 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 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 8, 20202 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles, Part 4, The Ebb

Tea Horse Road Chronicles Part 4. Continuing with an homage and tribute to spaces, moments, and sparks in the memory palace of time spent...

Jeff Fuchs

Dec 6, 20201 min read

Tea Horse Road Chronicles Part 2 - Coming Snow

Nomads tuck into wools as a snow storm begins to usher in a new sky and new snow-filled gusts near Litang, in western Sichuan. The...

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...

Jeff Fuchs

Oct 28, 20208 min read

Tea's Brilliant (and Needed) Informality

Mr. Gao and his tidy moustache move past, beckoning me to join. He has finished a day of pan frying his remarkable teas, and now it is...