Chai trails around Dubai

Chai. No matter what anyone has to say about all the fancy teas in the world, there’s nothing as comforting as a hot cup of chai. No fuss, no fancy cups required. We’ve spent many evenings in parking lots near chai shops around old Dubai, sipping on chai, laughing about something that happened over the weekend, crying about things we thought were worth crying about at the time, and contemplating life. Its been a BFF ritual for the longest time.

So naturally, when Rainbow* asked us if we would be interested in a quest to find some of the best chai around the city, we jumped on that train pretty quickly! The only catch was that we had to come up with our own concoction at the end of the challenge. While we’ve usually either run to our moms or cafeterias around the city for a cup of chai, we were up to the challenge. I mean, how hard could making a cup of tea be, right?

Here are some of the places we visited for the sake of “research”.

Video shot by Ekta Saran & Namrata Kamath. Find Ekta’s work on www.ektasaran.com

We asked all of these awesome chai places what makes their karak so special. They weren’t super open about the recipe (we get it, it has to remain a secret) but they were kind enough to give us a few hints here and there. We soaked in all this new found knowledge and came up with a recipe of our own – but with a twist!

As we’d been drinking a LOT of chai over these past two weeks, we wanted the recipe to be a little different. On a lazy afternoon, as we sat on the couch and shared a dark chocolate bar, we contemplated what that twist should be. Biting into the last bits, the light bulb went on… dark chocolate!

Here is the recipe to She Said’s Dark Chocolate Karak Chai. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think!

[kindred-recipe id=”2585″ title=”Dark Chocolate Karak Chai”]

*This is a sponsored post