Whilst the film crew negotiated the India-Pakistan border the UK support team navigated the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk and Suffolk-Essex fault lines to attend ‘The 8^th Annual Christmas Food and Craft Show’ at Cressing Temple Barns, Essex. Minus one wrong turning on account of two ridiculous mini roundabouts and the main road looking more like a side street than the mighty A road it was, we arrived without much drama.

Our stall was in the Granary barn flanked by a biscuit seller (more on them later) and an apple juice and jams stand. After unloading the boxes from our hired Renault Clio andcarrying them up the rickety wooden stairs of the barn, we set about making our table look splendid. On top of the pink, white and floral tablecloths we placed glass jars filled with lots of different types of delicious tea. Either side wicker baskets containing metal tea cadies in royal blue, racing green and rich red; tea strainers and tea infusers that looked like Saturn; colourful tea pot shaped tea plates and then a selection of pre-packaged teas added to the spectacle. A recent addition in time for Christmas are our fabulous brown paper packages tied up with string – hot pink string – which could be seen in the back corner. We have several varieties, with the option for customers to make up their own if they wish, although the most popular was the set containing Jasmine Green, Makaibari Green and a tea strainer. To the back hung our wonderful ‘Tracing Tea.com’ banner, which Cath had painstakingly made last week, oh, and our bright pink ‘Tracing Tea’ t-shirts also ensured that we were the brightest stall there!

Typically Saturday morning was a bit slow but once the clock reached 11am we were all pleasantly surprised about how much custom we had. As well as introducing English breakfast lovers to the Makaibari Apoorva, or white tea fans to Glenburn’s first flush we also handed out lots of leaflets promoting the documentary and also giving the lucky recipitent a free tea bag on account of the fair trade tea bag stapled on the front.

I had a fun lunch break watching the display dogs, one of which completely ignored the instructions of his handler and instead of galloping towards him he decided he’d rather make a b-line for the van where I suspect he may have found some biscuits! Cath and Esme were pleased to see that Julian, the fudge man they’d met at the Cambridge Food Fair, was present and it appeared that Julian was happy to see them too as they returned with free slabs of fudge. Excellent. Saturday was a very successful day with customers favouring the Assam and the Makaibari green to the extent that we realised we’d have very little left for Sunday.

Sunday morning and we were back in our Clio and returning to Essex. It was a very foggy morning but all the more beautiful for it, with sunlight sneaking through the odd cloud formation. The barn wasn’t as cold as it had been yesterday morning – although that may have been because I was prepared with four layers and a beret! Sunday was much busier than Saturday and having handed out about 400 flyers yesterday we passed around at least 600 today. That’s a lot of free fair trade tea bags!

The Darjeeling monsoon flush, the Jasmine Green and our rich English Breakfast were the teas du jour although most of the children really liked smelling the Rose Congou. Over the day we got talking to our biscuit neighbour who kindly gave us some free short bread bistcuits. They are the best I’ve ever had and were put aside as a nice treat to have during a tea break next week.

Many customers were excited to hear about the documentary, and chuckled when they heard that deciding our route wasn’t really ambitious enough we’re driving it in a tuk tuk – “Yes that’s 15,000 miles in a vehicle that has a top speed of 35 mph when you’re going down hill and have a good wind behind you…” Somehow that fact made the drive back to Cambridge seem slightly less tiring…

Last week Cath, Esme and I headed out of the city centre and carved our way out to Barrington to run a tea tasting for 33 girl guides. After seeing me answer an awkward phone call it had been suggested that I present the tea tasting whilst Esme and Cath handled the tea.

Over a course of an hour we tried six types of tea: the white tea received the thumbs up, whilst the Russian Caravan promoted a mass exodus towards the ‘spit bowls’. I explained a little bit about the documentary, detailing the route using the fantastic map that’s been made for the California-led education programme. As I got into the ins and outs of the botanical identity of the tea the girls listened intently – although they seemed most interested in the stories of espionage and the James Bond-esque Robert Fortune! The story about Bodhidharma tearing off his eyelids and throwing them into a pot of boiling water in which they shrivelled and transformed into tea leave promoted gasps, whilst the picture of Catherine of Braganza complete with what can only be really described as poodle inspired hair, caused much laughter!

We all had a really fun evening and we were pleased to hear many of the girls say that before tonight they hadn’t liked tea at all, but, after trying out the Tracing Tea blends they may very well ask their Mums to go and buy some the next time they were out and about! 

Megan

For a thousand years sultans, emperors and viceroys have made their mark on the Delhi landscape, constructing forts, palaces and places of worship to project their power and extoll their virtues. For a thousand years these same rulers have lost their cities like clock-work, first to invading armies and, latterly, to an independent India.

Archaeological evidence shows at least 7 cities to have built in Delhi, although legend attests to at least one more: Indraprastha, the city of the Mahabharata holy text. The earliest that we can see today is Rai Pithora and its most important site is the Qutb Minar complex. Qutb-ud din Aibak arrived in India in the 12th century and was to be the first of the Muslim rulers of Delhi, defeating as he did the last Hindu king, Prithviraj Chauhan. The first structure that Qutb-ud din completed was his mosque, the Quwwat-ul Islam Masjid which is the oldest mosque still standing in India. Qutb-ud din clearly saw his invasion marking not only a new political era but also a relgious one as he reportedly destroyed 27 Hindu and Jain temples and incorporated their intricately carved columns in his mosque. It was a very physical way of saying that his power was absolute and extended to matters of a spiritual nature as well as to those of politics and economics.

City number 2 is Siri, built by the 14th century ruler Ala-ud din Khilji. Ala-ul din ruled under constant threat of attack from the Mongols in the north and so built a fort with huge battlements and inpenetrable bastions. Realising too that the availability of water can make or break a fort in the event of a siege he had his subjects construct a reservoir 50 hectares in size. It was dug out by hand and contemporary accounts say that an archer stood on one bank would be unable to shoot an arrow across the tank. The fort and its tank are still clearly visible today in Hauz Khas, a popular and rather fashionable ‘village’ in the heart of Delhi.

Tughlaqabad is city number 3 and, unfortunately, from its very beginning it was cursed. Ghiyas-ud din Tughlaq, the city’s founder, made the mistake of diverting labourers from the shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya, a Sufi saint, to work on his new city. Infuriated, the saint decreed that the city would never be an abode of kings but only of shephers and their sheep. He followed this happy piece of news by announcing Ghiyas-ud din’s imminent death. Both predictions came true and the mighty walls of Tughlaqabad house only a desolate interior.

Firoza Shah gave his name to Firozabad, or Firoz Shah Kotla. His treasury was empty and his empire fast disintegrating but Firoz had an insatiable desire to build, believing the capacity to do so was a gift straight from God himself. His court chroniclers claim he was personally responsible for the construction of 200 gardens, 40 mosques and 100 public baths as well as villages, bridges and other structures, although we must bear in mind their tendency to exaggeration!

Humayun, the co-builder of city number 5, Shergarh, is one of history’s more unlucky figures. Like all the Mughal Emperors he claimed descent from Genghis Khan and Amir Timur (Tamerlaine to Shakespeare fans…) but unfortunately he did not inherit thier military prowess. Shortly after coming to power in 1530 he was driven out of India by Sher Shah Sur, an Afghan with a competing power base in Bihar, and forced to seek refuge at the Persian court. It would be 15 years before he regained his throne in Delhi and once he did he had just a year to live. Whilst enjoying an afternoon of women and wine on the top of his library in Shergarh he heard the call to prayer and started down the stairs towards the neighbouring mosque. In his haste (and possibly a little inebriated) he lost his footing, fell and died from his injuries a few days later. It would be his son, Akbar, who would now come to the fore and lead the Mughal Empire to its greatest heights.

The Mughals Emperors are also the founders of Shahjahanabad, or Old Delhi as it is most commonly known. Shah Jahan was the penultimate of the Great Mughals and was also the man behind the construction of the Taj Mahal. He was a great aesthete and prided himself on his imperial architecture. In Delhi his new city contained the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque with space for 10,000 worshippers, as well as the Red Fort, whose walls reached to heights of as much as 33m. The later Mughals would remain in power in Delhi, albeit in much reduced circumstances, as late as 1857 when the British exiled the last Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, publicly stripped and executed the royal princes and razed to the ground many of the mansions and gardens of Old Delhi. It was not our finest hour.

The Brits had based themselves in Kolkata throughout the 18th and 19th centuries but in 1911 George V unexpectedly announced that the capital was to be moved to Delhi, the centre of British India. An English architect, Edwin Lutyens, was commissioned to come up with a design that incorporated the finest aspects of Mughal and Classical architecture and projected the might of British power across India and beyond. The most significant buildings in the city are the secretariat buildings and Rashtrapati Bhavan (President’s Palace – formerly the home of the Viceroy of India), India Gate which is India’s memorial to the soldiers who died in WW1, and the Imperial Hotel where the most important figures of the 20th century have stayed and worked. Nehru, Jinnah and Gandhi all came here, as have a number of foreign celebrities including Angelina Jolie and Sting.

Tracing Tea took on the 7 Cities by tuk-tuk, ably assisted by Nandu and Satish, our experienced local crew, and Sunil, our Paharganj rickshaw wallah. The driving shots were a challenge but, as you can see below, we got there in the end. The footage from Delhi is probably the best we’ve shot to date and I’m looking forward to sharing it when the series airs. It was certainly great fun to make!

An infinite number of words have been written about the Taj in far more eloquent lines than I can muster, so I’m leaving you instead with the building as it stands, letting it speak for itself.