Dear chai lovers,
Spring is here. I mean actually here — not theoretical spring, not the spring on the calendar that arrives when the weather is still making its mind up, but the spring you can feel: warm mornings, long evenings, the light staying until 6:30 and the air at 7am being pleasant in a way that February simply was not.
This changes the chai.
The Spring Cup
The winter masala chai is a specific object. Maximum ginger, cinnamon present and felt, cardamom underneath, the whole thing rich and warming and slightly aggressive in its intent. The winter cup is an argument against the cold.
The spring cup has no argument to make. The cold is gone. You are not drinking to warm up; you are drinking because chai is how you start a day, because the ritual exists regardless of temperature, because the morning is not properly morning without it.
The spring chai is lighter. Not weak — there is no virtue in weak tea — but adjusted. Less ginger, or thinner ginger. More cardamom. A slightly higher proportion of milk so the cup is creamy rather than sharp. Some people add fresh mint in spring — a few leaves in the last thirty seconds of steeping — and this is a valid and refreshing choice.
The spring chai is also, because the mornings now permit it, an outdoor cup. Take it to wherever the morning light is best and give it ten minutes.
A Reader Recipe
Last week I received an email from a reader in Nagpur — Priya Desai, who has been reading this newsletter since Issue #3 — with a recipe that I have made three times since receiving it.
Priya's Orange Cardamom Chai:
Dry a strip of nagpur orange peel in the sun for two days, or use the peel of any good mandarin dried in the oven at 80°C for an hour. Add one strip to your chai along with three cardamom pods, brew as normal, strain, drink.
The citrus fragrance with the cardamom is — I will say it plainly — extraordinary. We have written about Nagpur's orange chai culture this month and Priya's version is the home recipe version of what those tapris have been doing for years.
Thank you, Priya.
Where to Go Right Now
March and April are, with October and November, the best months to travel in India. The heat has not consolidated, the monsoon is months away, and several destinations are at their most beautiful.
Hampi, Karnataka — the ancient ruins in the best light. Read our guide to Hampi.
Mussoorie, Uttarakhand — spring in a hill station before the summer rush arrives. The chai there is good.
Coorg, Karnataka — coffee estates in the mist, with the surprising chai that the Kodava community has been drinking for generations. Read more.
Issue #20
Twenty issues of this newsletter. When I sent the first one, I did not know what it would become — a letter about chai that somehow became a letter about India, about culture, about the particular pleasure of paying attention to small things.
The small thing at the centre of it remains the same: a well-made cup of tea. Everything else radiates outward from that.
Brew something good this week.
Until the April issue,
Chai Bhai
Issue #20 of the Chai Bhai Newsletter — March 2026. Archive at /newsletter.