Traveling With Tea

If you are like most people, you enjoy the occasional warm soothing beverage before bed (or during the day, or perhaps in the morning to pry your eyelids open).  If you are like me, you prefer tea to coffee; there’s something about the soothing nature of soaking delicious unfurling leaves in warm water and holding the mug between your hands that makes me happy.

Unless you’re interested in an emergency tea party, you’ll probably have to bring your own tea with you wherever you go.  The two schools of tea are: bags or looseleaf?  Teabags are easily portable (throw a few in your pocket and call it a day) and can be purchased in grocery stores.  They’re often older, and lower quality teas than looseleaf.  Looseleaf teas are a bit harder to transport — especially when their innocuous presence can look like ANOTHER flakey green substance in a small baggie — but not impossible: some strong ziploc baggies with clear labels can help keep your teas separated.  If you like a lot of different teas or want a seriously hardcore weatherproof case, you can sort individual servings of tea into the day slots of those daily pill boxes.  Then you can flip open one “day” and put the required amount of tea in your cup!

You can also get fill-your-own tea bags, usually in either plastic mesh or a papery mesh, and put as much of whatever tea you like into them, for less mess.  It’s fairly easy to find both regular mugs and travel mugs with built-in infusers, as well, meaning you don’t even need to buy an external infuser for making your tea (which can be bought from Target, by the way).

Carrying tea in bags, while it does create more waste (most teabags are individually wrapped, although Celestial Seasonings brand teabags are often not), is so convenient.  You can slide one into your backpack, one into your day pack, one into the sole of your boot while you’re hiking.  If you don’t want the hassle of trying to find a Styrofoam cup at your destination or clipping an unwieldy travel mug to your pack with a carabiner, consider an ORIKASO fold-flat mug, which is super lightweight and can work for both hot and cold liquids (ORIKASO also makes plates and bowls).

Just because it seems like a lot of stuff doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a delicious hot mug of tea whenever you like, and sometimes it might be the one thing to keep you sane, settle you down, or share with a friend.