Tales of travel have been told since ever man indulged his sense of adventure and stepped out of his known world. Tracing Tea will be no different, but in addition to regaling our friends at home we want to tell our story in a book. However in a genre nearly as old as time it is easy to be stale and uninteresting, which is why we will be seeking to combine words and art in our work to construct a new narration. Thus we hope at least to tell an age old story in a new way.

This is our ambition and we aim to produce a unique work of high quality and high style. Yet what is key is that behind it all lies a great story not just of eccentric adventure and novelty but of people and politics, religion and society, the interactions of strangers and lives lived in different ways.

Any profits over expenses from the book are to be divided between the Red Cross/Red Crescent as well as smaller local charities from the countries we will be visiting.

For more information please follow the links below or contact Andrew.

The Story

Tracing tea will be presenting itself to the world in a number of formats including television, stand alone articles and this book. Each will have a different angle on the expedition and where the documentary will focus around the cultural and historic sights on our route, a role to which the visual medium is well suited, the book will be at once more thematic and more anecdotal. Put very simply we intend to explore a few key themes through the stories of the people we meet supplemented by our own anecdotes. We thus hope to put together a vibrant and informative piece about some important themes given further colour by the inevitable humour of driving thousands of miles in tiny three wheeled city-taxis.

We expect some of these themes to appear once we are on the road, however the following are examples of ideas we would like to focus on...

1) Tea is at the heart of our expedition and as such its history, its cultural importance, and its changing nature in the countries on route will be central to the book and the base from which we will explore the stories of the places and people we come across. The British drink more tea per person than anyone else in the world, and it is for this reason that our journey begins in Darjeeling and ends in London.

However tea is much more than a start and finish point. The consumption of tea is a feature of almost every country on our route and is connected to some of their most important social and historical movements. The Iranian chaikhaneh (tea house) for example, is a central part of that country's culture, a vital forum for socialising, politicking and the making of business deals. Furthermore the similarities between it and the Uzbek chaykhanas speak of the traditional integration of two areas which have frequently shared a single ruler. Similarly tea consumption in Turkey is intrinsically linked to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the birth of the modern Turkey; though the country now produces 6% of the worlds tea it was first imported only in the 1920's in response to a coffee shortage after the loss of Mocha in Yemen. To find out more about tea please click here.

2) Islam is a subject of great importance at present; our route will takes us through areas of Sunni, Shia, Ishmaeli and even Ahmedi majority: through secular Turkey and the Islamic republics of Iran and Pakistan; through regions of Central Asia where Islam fights forces of apathy similar to the Christian west; others such as Uzbekistan where fundamentalism is on the rise; through Islamic countries with sizeable non-Islamic populations and countries in which Islam is a minority religion. By taking our questions to these contrasting societies we hope to gain insight into the role of the Islamic religion in the modern world and will be seeking to find the points of agreement and difference between such disparate interpretations of religion.

3) Nomadism is a highly romantic concept that for many people belongs to history, however throughout Central Asia nomadic and semi-nomadic groups struggle on against the modern world and fight to maintain their cultural identity in the face of economic change and Westernisation. They also prepare their tea in a very unusual way...

4) The Soviet legacy is of great importance to three extremely different portions of our route. The sometimes contrasting, sometimes remarkably similar ways in which Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus have come to terms with the new post-Soviet world are both interesting in themselves and a fascinating way of accessing the nature of these regions and their peoples.

Research

A project such as this requires a large amount of preliminary research in order to inform our later experiences and organise the various rendezvous required. To this end two members of the team are currently employed in putting together the background information for both the book and the television series. Once we are on route our research and thus our story will divided between the impromptu interviews and experiences which will undoubtedly occur and a series of pre-arranged meetings. Currently the team is successfully involved in putting together a range of contacts within the academic community of the countries on our route, which will in time be supplemented with religious, political and community leaders. Such meetings will give us access to a great deal more high quality information than if were we to simply rely on our own resources, and will provide the serious backbone to our story.

If you would like to find out more about our research or feel you may be able to help please contact Andrew or Sophie.

Format and Construction

As has already been highlighted, we intend Tracing Tea the book to be a fully integrated work of art and prose in which the two media combine to tell the story, the presence of our expedition artist allows us to be ambitious in using visuals in more than just a supplementary capacity to the text.

Furthermore, though Tracing Tea has a team writer who will provide the bulk of the text and will edit the work, we will be seeking to exploit the broad range of academic skills held by the team. The main text will be supplemented on occasion by other team members whose expertise allows them greater insight on a given subject. Such subjects may range from a detailed history of a place or person to an explanation of an N.G.O. engineering project to a discussion of the changing significance of the sari in Indian society.

The chapter layout of the book has not as yet been finalised in detail, we expect it to loosely follow the journey geographically but with the continuity in the themes rather than the daily log. The depth of focus will vary significantly with the amount of research we are able to conduct for a given idea or country, however we do not see this as a problem, as the detail extracted on a given subject can then be used to broadly illustrate several others. For example, the university contacts we currently have in place in Kyrgyzstan suggest that we may expend a large amount of time and text there proportionate to its size, but the detailed information we hope to gain on subject such as nomadism and life after communism can be used to support wider conclusions on these themes and on modern life in Central Asia.

For more information on the book please contact Andrew.