A cold evening in Shangrila, huddled in a room on the upper floor of a wooden cottage, a group of us were treated by Jeff Fuchs to a visual of his trek along the ancient tea horse road that had culminated in the writing and publishing of a book. The images were powerful and the story-teller interesting.

Source: Amazon

That evening made me want to read the book and after several months, I settled down to reading the book over days and over cups of pu’er tea.The ancient tea horse road is a narrative that takes us along the ancient route and offers us glimpses into the vista, the conditions that the traders and employees would have faced travelling along this route, little insights into the people and their ancestors that would have been engaged in the trade and most importantly, the types of tea that is so revered by the people along this route. Jeff brings an element of the personal self into the narrative by his accounts of the people he trekked with and the friendships formed along this route, which makes it all the more of an interesting read.