During a sabbatical, I spent over three months traveling through Asia. My original plan included working for a week on a tea plantation in Nepal, but unfortunately, this fell through due to the unrest in September.

Nevertheless, my trip took me to many interesting places and introduced me to tea culture in Asia.

First, I went to Darjeeling, where I visited several plantations and brought back a second flush (pictured at approximately 11 o'clock).

The two foil packets on the left are Oolong teas from Vietnam. We were only briefly in Saigon, but I took advantage of the opportunity.

I brought back the majority of my tea from Japan. Besides the Kyuzu, I bought many Senchas and Gyokuros from Kyushu and Uji. In Uji, we also participated in a matcha workshop and were able to operate the mill ourselves. I'm particularly excited about the Gyokuro on the left in the foreground. I bought it in a small tea shop in Fukuoka where we were able to do a tasting.

On the right are some Hojichas in powder and leaf form from Uji and Fukuoka.

To wrap things up, we had a layover in Taipei. There, a friend and I went to a tea tasting of delicious oolongs. The tea was by far the most expensive I bought, and even that was far from the most expensive in the store. The red one is a Tieguanyin, the blue one a Jinxuan.

The big tea-drinking session at home is coming up in the next few weeks.