A hot cup of Tandoori Tea/Chai!

Did you ever hear of tandoor chai? Ever tried it?

The taste of this is quite interesting, nothing like regular tea. If you are a tea lover, I must say, you should try it. The earthly taste that comes from the mud cup, and the brunt flavor from the smoke bring something extraordinary to the sizzles and froths.

If you are wondering what is this tandoor chai, then these photos would be a glimpse for you to acculturate about this tradition.

Let's see...

This is how they place the mud cups over the coal/oven. Eventually, it becomes super hot, reddish like iron; then they take the cup out of the fire and pour the tea over it.

It's made by taking iron tongs to place an earthen cup in a glowing hot tandoor (or just a large metal drum).

Then this chai is poured into another kulhad (mini cup) and served.

It takes a few minutes to prepare the chai. The making process is quite fascinating, I'm sure you would enjoy seeing this.

You don't have to give back the mud cups, you can bring them home, and do whatever you want. I used to do some DIY and decore with it. This time I still did not get the time to make it happen.

We ordered masala chai, so the arena started to smell sweet, smokey, and earthly the whole time. But the cup was super hot, it was almost impossible for me to hold it in bear hands. They supplied tissue but I decided to take it to a tall glass so I can enjoy my tea more.

This is the place, it's in front of a shopping center.

The tea stall is named after the market, Eastern Banabithi Tea Stall. I don't know if you have noticed but there's a list of their available tea behind the man who was making the chai. There were over 100 types of tea.

I have noticed that people were trying olive & tamarind tea. I was quite surprised seeing the combo as a tea but seems like it's trending. I would love to try that next time.