Through this work and chatting with locals, Saurabh has discovered new favorite chai spots—called chai walas—in different cities.
Each spot is rich with its own personal history. “There’s one in Jaisalmer where an old man has been serving tea since the 1980s, so I go to him now when I’m in Jaisalmer, which is our westernmost town in India,” Saurabh shares.
“In Jodhpur, there’s a tea shop called Chandu Ba—his grandfather was a refugee [during India’s] partition, so he came from Pakistan. They make Irani chai… which is very different but they’ve ‘Indianised’ it—they simmer the tea with spices and reduce them.”
Visitors always find something to appreciate in the ritual of drinking chai, circling back to Saurabh’s early memories of chai to connect with others. “Chai does actually help me a lot in terms of bonding—even if people don’t like tea, they just like the whole idea about it,” he says. “That’s what chai does.”
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You can have an in-depth experience of India’s national drink with a chai tasting on the Classic Rajasthan trip, but every adventure to India is a master class in the art of sipping tea.
