Tea pilgrimage: Kalimpong

Coming down from Sikkim in stages, we found ourselves in the hill town of Kalimpong the afternoon of February 28. Tired of sitting in a moving vehicle, we walked for hours around town. Kalimpong has ritzy areas up on a ridge, including a golf course for Indian Army officers. It also has slummy areas, including a small skid row for alcoholics, and we noticed an obvious, ramshackle brothel or two.

In the lower part of town, there's a market called the Haatbazaar (I've probably misspelled it) where hundreds of vendors spread out their merchandise in the open air. Amid the countless sellers of vegetables and beans - let's not talk about the meat - there are vendors who stock spices and CTC tea in bulk. A typical price for CTC tea there, straight from the open paper sack, is 80 rupees ($1.85) a kg.

We had a chance to get a bit closer to real Tibetan tea at a friendly little restaurant and hotel called Cloud9. We got into a long conversation with Binod Yonzone, the owner, about hill country culture and politics, and he made his approximation of Tibetan tea for us. Still no barley, as he cheerfully admitted, and green tea rather than Puerh, but there was plenty of butter and, to my untutored taste, the right amount of salt: a satisfying, hearty ... broth?

/Lew

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Lewis Perin
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