Updated November 7, 2026 at 6:00 AM EST
In places across South Asia, like India and Pakistan, people power their morning — and much of their day — with chai. The tea, boiled in milk with sugar and spices like ginger and cardamom for a version called masala chai, is tightly woven into the culture.
Chai has long been a comforting drink there, but its rise across South Asia has a lot to do with a yearslong and expensive marketing campaign, starting with the British.
"Five generations ago, my relatives probably had no access to tea," says Nilofer Afridi, a Pakistani food anthropologist.
China kept a near-monopoly on the global tea trade, sending British silver flowing into East Asia. By the late 1700s, the British were selling opium to offset that trade deficit with China.
The British wanted their own tea. And there were varieties of tea drunk in local communities in what is now the northeastern Indian state of Assam, an area the British ruled as part of their sprawling empire that straddled much of South Asia. "But for some reason, they [the British] thought, oh no, the Chinese tea is better," says Lizzie Collingham, who writes on food and the British Empire.
And they got it, years later, when a Scottish botanist snuck into China to steal tea seedlings. Soon, the British were growing their own tea in India.
"The British realized they could be selling all this tea they're growing to Indians, but they've got to persuade the Indians then to drink tea," Collingham says. "So they start the most incredible campaign."
In the 1930s, the British employed many people to popularize the tea. Salesmen were sent to grocers. Vendors were sent to factories. Some were even sent to railway stations, all to sell tea.
Then, World War II broke out, and about 2 million Indian men fought alongside the British. And what followed the Indian forces? Tea trucks.
They had "a letter writer for the Indian soldiers so they can get somebody to write a letter home — and they get given a cup of tea," Collingham says. "After the war, they bring it — a liking for tea — back with them to India."
Back in India, Indian housewives were met by door-to-door marketers selling tea directly at their homes.
"They make a cup of tea, distribute it, and then leave little packets of tea hoping that they'll make their own tea. [And] they actually managed to get Indians to drink tea," Collingham says.
Except tea in South Asia was not made the British way. Indians made their tea very milky, with very little leaves. In an early account, a tea inspector describes what we now know as chai — thick, simmering tea leaves mixed with milk, sugar and spices like cinnamon, black pepper and cardamom.
According to food writer Afridi, those spices have long been used in warm South Asian beverages, and the popularity of chai's milk-forward flavor may be tied to the working classes.
"It might be the only fortifying meal so to speak that you can look forward to," Afridi says.
Today, tea is still tightly woven into many South Asian cultures, and it shapeshifts through South Asia. In the Himalayas, it's salty — some add yak butter. In Kashmir, it's served pink. In Pakistan, it's sold at "tea hotels" — slang for tea cafes — out of gallon-sized clay pots to give it that earthy flavor. There, it's called doodh patti, and the best versions are thick and creamy. But the most widespread version, from India, where it all started, is chai.
There's at least one glaring exception to the chai culture of South Asia — and that's in southern India, where kaapi is king. Pronounce it again, swap that p for an f — yes, it's coffee, filtered in a brass tube, served in pretty brass thimble cups, frothy with sweetened milk. It's almost as if the way it's flavored suggests a South Asian theme.
Dhanika Pineda adapted this story for the web.
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