The tea makers of Peshawar

Peshawar was once on the ancient caravan route from Kabul to Lahore and the old city is filled with ancient traditional hole-in-the-wall tea houses that once supplied merchants and camel herders. Today an army of young boys and men race around delivering trays of tea, spiced with cardamon pods and sugar, to customers at nearby tables and chairs and also to the local stores in the bazaar. The tea makers use brass samovars, originally from Persia, which have a central charcoal chimney to keep the water hot to make the tea which is kept hot on coal burning stoves.