Drinking tea through Sri Lanka
In my Everywhere podcast I have a whole episode about drinking tea - all over the world - listen to that right here or right here on SPOTIFY. Tea is, of course, colonial and marvelously complicated, and in that complexity is America’s rejection of tea (for coffee as you can imagine) at the Boston Tea Party, but some of the culture lives on in sweet teas and now tea cocktails at hipster bars…I unpack that with my friend Sarah Scarborough who owns Tea Huntress and I then get drunk on tea.
What I love most about tea is how misunderstood it is and traveling around parts of Asia has given me a better knowledge of its ancient roots. As a South African I drink tea every day, most days multiple times…in every variant you can imagine. From English breakfast teas, to Rooibos tea, there is always an occasion that calls for me to sit for tea. Recently my Mother brought some rusks from South Africa…and we delved into a moment of nostalgia. Something about my childhood of dipping a rusk into milky malty tea…
But for the moment I want to venture us over to Sri Lanka, a place I am currently dreaming of…when someone tells me it’s so unsafe, I remind them of what is happening in America (January 6th coup, the Pelosi attempted assassination, the subway attacks in New York, Ye…shall I continue?) and that nowhere is really truly safe…so you know me, I am hardly the one to recommend things, I send you out to find your own adventure, I just like to tell stories.
So here’s a classic travel piece with an itinerary from the Tea Huntress herself, narrated by the two of us. In fact, if this thrills you, paid subscribers to Without Maps get special access to our tea retreat to Sri Lanka in 2024.