The Taste Of Kenya, In My Cup...

A lot can happen over a cup of tea.... That's exactly what happened sometime back...

My parents were recently in Mumbai to spend the New Year holidays with us and they brought along a treasure of great food - a good mix of gourmet stuff from a food store close to their home and a lot of homemade goodies. That treasure trove included a few tea bags of Kericho tea - a tea that comes from the Kenyan county of Kericho.

Kericho is located  on the highlands west of the Kenyan Rift Valley - an area well known for its marathon runners. The climate and altitude of 6500 feet makes it ideal for tea cultivation. Kericho is said to be the tea capital of Kenya and Kericho tea known for its brightness, attractive colour, brisk flavour and fragrance. Such is the popularity of tea here that the central square of Kericho town is known as Chai Square!

Now these tea bags traveled from Kenya to Beijing - gifted to my sister by her friend... She shared them with my parents who were in Beijing last year...

And from Beijing the tea travelled to Delhi and then to Mumbai....

And then the taste of Kericho comes into my cup...

The taste was crisp and flavourful....

With each sip, I was in sense teleported back to 1980-1981, when as a kid, I travelled with my parents across Uganda and Kenya in our beautiful blue Fiat 127, passing by the lush green tea gardens of the Rift Vally in Kenya...

Till now those memories were a bit faint...

But each sip of Kericho tea made me relive the memorable roadtrip, vividly... passing by the Equator, stopping and buying bananas, having them right on the Equator... and then sharing them with a local man who passed by with a walking stick...

I longed to get back, to jump on to the next Kenya Airways flight, that I have so often see here in Mumbai, to head back to the land of my birth, East Africa, to relive those moments all over again.....

All this happened as I enjoyed the taste of Kenya in my cup....