Travel · Tea · The slow way around
Some places are worth crossing an ocean for.
A travel letter from the quiet edges of the map, and the tea that happens to grow there. A crater lake that holds two colors at once. Granite peaks standing over the East China Sea. A narrow‑gauge railway climbing into cedar forest at four in the morning.
The regions
The places so far, and everything written about them.
Every region gets the main guide, then the outdoors, the five places, and the tea story underneath it.
The next region is already being written. Every destination, every guide →
The map
And this is where all of that actually is.
The tea, if you came for that
One fifth of the letter, and most of the reason.
The tea is usually why a place ended up on the list. These are the ways in.
Tea Farms
The hillsides themselves. Gorreana since 1883, and Taimu Mountain since long before anyone counted.
Tea Culture
How a place came to drink what it drinks. Ireland and Morocco grow none of it at all.
White Tea
Withered, dried, and otherwise left alone. One year tea, three years medicine, seven years treasure.
Mint Tea
Three glasses from the same pot, each stronger than the last. Gentle as life, strong as love, bitter as death.
Or go by place instead. Every destination →
The other half
A letter and a tea, in an envelope, once a month.
The newsletter is the reading. The Steeped Letter is the thing that shows up at your door.
Every month Mira, a traveling tea merchant who moves more slowly through the world than she needs to, writes from wherever she's landed and sends the letter with a tea chosen for that place and that season. A bookmark or a small keepsake goes in alongside it.
It arrives as post, not as a notification. Something to open without distraction, and to come back to.
Browse
Follow a leaf, or a way of going.
Or read the whole archive, newest first.
Guides, deep dives, and the odd essay about why a country with no tea fields drinks the most of it.
What to Do Outdoors in the High Atlas: Mule Trails, Gorge Walks, and the Long Way Over the Mountains
Come along
The next region is already being written.
Guides land in your inbox before they go public anywhere else. Free, and nothing else in between.
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