Chai Chai Coffee Coffee....

In India, tea is huge! But the actual cup size isn't. They serve small shots of tea that are sipped and savored in many different venues -- on the side of the road, delivered to your door, in a local eatery. And so that you don't burn your little piggies, part of the brewing process includes a high pour to allow the air to cool the thin stream of liquid before it even touches the cup (they call it 'pulling' the coffee or tea...check out this image of someone pouring coffee in Sing).

It's a ritual which we embraced in India and continue to enjoy in Singapore ;)

This was the average size of a cup of tea in India...about the size of a shot glass.

In Kumily, where the weather is cooler, there's no better start to the day then a 25 cent cup of coffee made fresh right before your eyes. I have a sweet tooth, so the tendency of the coffee and tea to lean towards the sweeter side was A-OK with me. See the high pour?

And while sitting in a local veg restaurant, Craig and I were confronted with this coffee presentation. Curious outer cup. Was it to keep our hands from getting burned on the metal cup? Was it to catch extra drips? Well, actually, what we soon found out (after looking around the room) was that it does it all. Some people lift both cups together to keep from getting burned until the coffee is cool enough to hold only the main cup. We also saw some people pour the coffee back and forth between the two cups to cool off the coffee themselves.

Tea on demand? Many entrepreneurs bike or walk around with a vat of tea doling it out to paying customers wherever they may be.