As pictured above, at 5.37 am on 06 May 2024 the man we later dubbed “the tea king of Dal Lake” was zeroing in on his next “target”: us.
We and he were at the floating market.
”No thank you” – a phrase we had spoken several times by the time I took the photo – was clearly the “wrong” response, and not worthy of his acceptance.
Our hero insisted that we see and smell how evidently superb was his freshly-brewed Kashmiri tea.
I suspect that Dal Lake has no more forceful “marketer”; even in an inland sea of enthusiastic salesmanship (and, almost invariably, the sellers are males) this bloke stood out!
The early morning air was cold.
The spiced tea’s aroma was incredible.
We caved in.
This proved an excellent decision; over several decades worth of travels in Asia, his is the most delicious of many spiced teas we have consumed.
Inevitably, our 5.37 am experience was not our only “tea king” sighting.
