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“Don’t drink too much tea,” my travel companion said. She
wasn’t speaking from experience. She, like me, was new to Nepal.
“It’s a diuretic,” she continued, citing basic common knowledge about any ingestible that’s hot, spicy and liquid. “You don’t want your stomach
to move too much on the trek.”
I took her advice
because I knew she
was right. Her tumul-
tuous ight from To-
ronto to Kathmandu had been
a physically eventful one. Stop-
ping in Dubai for close to a day, the unfamiliar food and drinks made her ight into Kathmandu a queasy one. Anyone experiencing the abdominal sensitivity that o en accompanies in- ternational travel (even a er drinking the foul, gassy Dukoral that’s supposed to prepare your stomach) knows that, when feeling ill at ease, it can be best to avoid hot beverages that run right through you.
But all that said, a masala chai was the rst truly comforting beverage I had in Kathmandu and it was one I would have at every opportunity during the rest of my adventure. It was something
(quite literally) sweet and familiar to look forward to — something unique to the landscape that quickly became a staple of every unpredictable meal I had there. I never knew if the chick- en would be slimy and sinewy or the cauli ower curry full of wet chunks of soggy onion. I always knew the tea
would be delicious. So I had it early on my journey and
I had it o en — even when the food and drinks decided to violently disagree with me
in Spartan hotel rooms and on lush hillsides.
During my too-brief stay, people o en asked what brought
me to Nepal. It was far from home — 11, 922 kilometers, to be exact. It was also a strange destination for someone who had never travelled to a develop- ing country. e roughest destinations I had visited until that point had been a pious Amsterdam hostel that, while being perfectly comfortable, was a lit- tle too open concept and reminded me of a women’s prison with its cluster of bunk beds and a curfew and a dilap- idated, slanted cottage in the Musko- kas. Actually, to be fair, I have su ered more than one slated rented cottage in my day.
So when people ask why I ended up in