Conjuring Mountains Over a Cup of Tea
Conjuring Mountains Over a Cup of Tea
Chiya in Nepal
During the monsoon, the hillsides of the Annapurna Himalayan region crowd with plant life. Ferns grow on the trunks of trees and burst, in exuberant variety, out of the slant ground. Green drips from branches and springs from inside cracked rock. Everything is jewel-bright in the wet.
But there’s a reason that the monsoon is off-season for trekking: there is no view. At the top of a scarped trail, our guide Bharat points into nothing and names peaks we do not see. Machhapuchre, also called the Fishtail, Annapurna I, Lamjung Himal: it’s as if he is conjuring them. They do not appear.
I had imagined the mountains shrouded in cloud, and hoped for a gap or a crack through which we might spot them. But this fog wasn’t a cloud, or any bounded thing which seemed like it might move, or part. The air was made of pulped paper. Even when the sun shone and the mist ebbed enough to reveal the crest of hills we were hiking along, it was difficult to believe that there was anything at all beyond, let alone the towering behemoths of the Annapurna massif.
We, damp and decidedly mountainless, find rest and comfort in cups of chiya. We stop at nearly every village tea-house we pass through.
Nepali chiya is a close relative of Indian masala chai: spiced, sweet, hot, and milky. Here, it’s traditional to drink a cup for breakfast, and wait to eat until late morning.
After he learns that we live in Delhi, Bharat asks tea-house proprietors to steep the mixture longer. He seems to think Nepalis drink a milder brew. The flavor varies according to the spice mixture favored by the house: sometimes it’s heavier on cardamom, sometimes pepper, or cinnamon. Its consistency depends on the sort of milk used: water buffalo milk is heaviest, and healthful; “medicine,” as Bharat calls it. He tells us that local cows—a tiny breed—produce high-quality dairy, but in meagre quantity compared to their generous imported cousins.
I drink my favorite cup of chiya with breakfast on our final morning. It’s gently spiced, and creamy with the raw milk of a Bambi-eyed Jersey cow. I know that, because I filled the milking pail myself.
We had spent the night on an arcadian hilltop farm that runs on rainwater and the burning idealism of the Adhikari family. While Kathmandu chokes on its own pollution, the Adhikaris are striving to present an alternative lifestyle: sustainable, self-sufficient, ecologically gentle. The hill they live on is called Astam, which means sunset, and almost everything they consume is produced here. That includes milk.
The dairy cow’s udders are oiled and massaged before we begin. She’s a kind creature, and stands still as I fumble. When the bucket is finally full, the calf’s share is measured out. I sink my hand into the bowl so that the baby can suck on my fingers as she drinks. The rest of the milk is saved for us.
Breakfast is a pancake of mixed homegrown grains, earthy millet dominant among them. I douse it in honey, harvested from the drum-hives I’d seen hanging from village windows. The chiya is reddish, and tasty. I sip it outside and eat up the view.
The mist has vanished, and there they are, rearing, immense: the crystalline peaks of the Annapurnas. The Fishtail is collared in a wisp of scudding cloud.