A few weeks back I received an invite from Le Meridien to join the Tea Trails experience in Delhi. Some of my good blogger friends also encouraged me to participate in this well-curated event. And I am glad I heeded their advice and joined the team of bloggers, media, and tea lovers at Le Meridien. This Photo Journey shares about the famous tea shop in Old Delhi, which is in business for more than 70 years now, a tea-seller who has authored 24 books, and a tea tasting session by tea sommelier Vikram Mittal, followed by lunch.
After welcome-drinks at Le Meridien, we boarded AC coaches to reach Chandni Chowk. Everyone in the bus was offered water and namakpare.
After getting down at Red-fort parking, we took rickshaws to Kailash Chandra Jain Tea shop.
At Chandni Chowk, we met the family who is running tea shop for more than 70 years now. Different generations of jain family has witnessed the evolution of Delhi-6 from pre-independence era.
All of us got to taste 'Chalu Chai' (Masala Tea) at Kailash Chandra Jain Tea shop. We all enjoyed this special tea with home-made mathhi.
If you look closely at this tray of kulhad-chai, the tea is topped with almonds, pistachios, and saffron.
They keep making tea the whole day and also sell rabri at this shop. The tea is well boiled and their experience shines through. The milk also keeps boiling on the other stove.
When the tea is ready and put into these kulhads, almonds, pistachios, and saffron are used as toppings. Most customers prefer to have this tea with home-made Mathhis.
After interacting with the Jain family in Chandni Chowk, we headed towards our coaches in the same rickshaws. Our next stop was ITO (Hindi Bhawan). We met Mr Laxman Rao who makes tea outside Hindi Bhawan and is also an author with 24 books to his credit. Yes, you read it right - Mr Rao has written 24 books in Hindi, which are available on Flipkart, Amazon, and Kindle.
Mr. Rao talked to us and shared about his journey from Amrawati to Delhi. And then how he got into writing. He was 10th pass, when he came to Delhi and few weeks back, he completed MA in Hindi from Delhi University. He plans to do PhD and write more books. He has 2 sons, who also help him in running his tea-shop. One of them is doing CA and other is in Amity doing his MBA. Mr Rao told us that he starts his day at 6am with 5 newspapers (2 hindi, 2 english, and 1 marathi) and spends good amount of time in reading & writing during the first half. He opens his tea-stall at 1pm. We shall soon be sharing more about Mr Laxman Rao in a separate blog-post with few videos.
These are the sets of books published by Mr Laxman Rao.
After these 2 brilliant tea experiences, we headed back to Le Meridien where another tea tasting session was waiting for us.
Everyone took some time to relax and enjoy their drink.
Lunch was set and everyone was ready for awesome an brunch at Le Meridien. There was great variety of food at the counter.
While folks were waiting in the queue, I clicked some of these shots.
During the lunch we interacted with Tea sommelier Vikram Mittal. He shares a lot about tea, types of tea, their characteristics etc. He shared so much information about tea, which was hard to digest in one day :). Finally I understood that it's more about the taste you develop and what you like. I will also try to share a separate post on tea and the information shared by Mr Mittal.
Mr Vikram Mittal had 5 types of tea (without milk & sugar) for all the guests. He had also prepared small forms where everyone had to rate these 5 types on the following parameters - Dry Leaf appearance, Infused leaf aroma, taste, flavor, overall experience.
Overall, a day well spent at Tea Trails Experience organized by Le Meridien !!!
.jpg)