Sweet Milk Tea (Böja)

Böja (Tibetan for 'sweet tea') is brewed by simmering Assam or Yunnan black tea with milk and sugar until it turns a rich orange-red, fragrant with dairy and smooth on the palate—quite different from butter tea in both flavour and social role.

Sweet-tea culture arrived in Lhasa from Nepal and India through modern border trade, becoming popular in the early twentieth century and centring on tea houses around Barkhor Street, where it became an indispensable daily drink of the city's street life.

Drunk hot from a cup, often paired with Tibetan sweet bread (shapale) or small snacks; in Lhasa's tea houses, sweet tea is the medium for hours of conversation, and an afternoon with a bottomless cup is a local institution.

Its orange-red colour and milky aroma, paired with Tibetan sweet bread, make a perfect match; Lhasa's sweet-tea houses are the most approachable window onto Tibetan everyday culture.