Tea horse caravan trail

Route to the west

The tea horse caravan trail was the arduous route that Tibetans, Indians and the Han Chinese took to trade. with each other back when there wasn’t a convenient way to travel between Tibet, Myanmar and China, mainly in the Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces.  The Tibetans would trade their horses for Chinese tea, sugar and salt.  Stretching across some pretty risky terrain, including canyons, gorges and the Qinghai-Tibet and Hengduan mountain ranges, this route provided Tibetans with health necessities that complemented their meat heavy diets while the Chinese exchanged muscular horses in preparation for battles.  Starting at Xishuangbanna in the original Pu’er tea villages, the route from China spans across Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-La and Lhasa and then on to India, Nepal and Myanmar.  The route is over 2000 km long with 56 stops.  While the route was mainly used around a thousand years ago, long before that, over 3000 years ago, communication between the Chinese and Tibetan tribes took place, as evidenced by tombs found on the road.  More than twenty ethnic groups can be found along the trail, including the Nakhi people in Lijiang.  Today, pilgrims to Tibet and the sacred Meili Snowy Mountains still follow the route on their pilgrimage.