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The Empire of Tea
Tea first reached Europe via whispers. As the travellers kept noticing in the Asian cultures a strange predilection for this divine drink, the gossips and rumours began to spread. This was the first of the series of events that were going to shape the empire of tea. Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485-1577), an Italian scholar, mentioned…
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The Early History of Tea
From mythology, let’s move on to the history of tea. One of the earliest texts on the subject of tea is Ch’a Ching (also known as The Classic of Tea), written by Lu Yu in the eighth century CE. Lu Yu, the great tea master, began to travel and research tea and water in the year 755 CE.…
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The Tea Mythology
Before there was history, there was mythology. That’s the strange thing about human societies. The origins are almost always riddled with obscurities and only myths and legends can shine some light on them. The same holds true in the case of tea. Since it originated and evolved in the far-eastern cultures, which, historically, have maintained…
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Ruskin Bond: A Life Well Lived in the Mountains
Few writers are loved as much in India as Ruskin Bond. The famous children’s writer has spent much of his life in the Himalayas. Born to an English couple in the British India, the 17-year-old Ruskin Bond had to go back to England in 1951. It was while he was in England, though, in the…
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Himalayas in Indian Imagination
The concept of mountains as places of perfection in an imperfect world is a powerful trope in India, especially when it comes to the mighty Himalayas. Author and mountaineer Ed Douglas writes about the perspective through which Indians (of past and present) have viewed these mountains in his book Himalaya: A Human History. In the…
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When Swami Vivekananda Became a Shaman in a Himalayan Village
Himalayas have always inspired the spiritual seekers of the Indian subcontinent. The mighty, majestic mountains fill you with a feeling of mysticism. This was true in the 19th century as well, when Swami Vivekananda, the famous Indian monk, pursued his spiritual yearnings. In his biography Swami Vivekananda on Himself, the monk recounted one such experience.…
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Iqbal’s Ode to the Himalayas
Muhammad Iqbal, the National Poet of Pakistan, was born in British India. In the early twentieth century, his poetry emerged as a remarkable site where message and art coalesced, as he re-configured major poetic devices like metaphor, myth, and symbol to re-visit history, philosophy and the Islamic faith to develop his individual vision. While his…
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When Mark Twain Took a Train to Darjeeling
The year was 1894. Mark Twain, the great American writer, had gone bankrupt due to some poor investment choices. Therefore, in order to extricate himself from the debt, he undertook a journey through the British Empire, which, back then, meant pretty much the entire world. The route provided a wonderful opportunity for Twain to deliver…
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