Chai is so prevalent in India and Sri Lanka that it could be called the National drink. It is very common to see the tea wadis serving their chai to the walk-by street traffic. In North America we have the coffee carts in the sub continent and Sri Lanka you have the wadis. Paint the following picture in your mind: the tea wadis cart has that well used look (bashed, dented), quite often with a charcoal fire going keeping the water boiling so steam and smoke are rising, an old evaporated milk can full of sugar, another bashed and dented can with the chai spices, an eclectic collection of semi-clean mugs and glasses and a wizened chai expert deftly pouring back and forth from great heights, tea with spices and milk, combining the two ingredients. Once combined it is normal to add a fantastic amount of sugar for that real chai experience.

Chai is brewed with milk and a mixture of spices. Each recipe can be different depending upon the spices used. The word chai literally means tea (different languages use various forms of this word - for example Portuguese call it cha , Hindus call it chai, and in Chinese the sound of the symbol for tea sounds very much like cha.)