Boiling Point Is Not What You Think
Here is something that will mess with your chai routine: at 3,400 meters above sea level in Cusco, Peru, water boils at roughly 88 to 89 degrees Celsius instead of 100. In La Paz, Bolivia — one of the highest capital cities on Earth at around 3,640 meters — it is closer to 87 degrees.
Why does that matter? Because the standard chai brewing method assumes a rolling boil at 100 degrees. Spices need sustained high heat to release their essential oils fully. Tea leaves need near-boiling water to extract tannins and caffeine at the right rate. Drop the temperature by 11 or 12 degrees and everything changes. Your cardamom takes longer to open up. Your ginger is slower to release gingerol. Your tea extracts unevenly, pulling out some compounds faster than others.
I learned this the hard way in a tiny kitchen in the San Blas neighborhood of Cusco, trying to brew masala chai with spices I had hauled across two continents. The water was boiling — or at least it looked like it was. The chai came out thin, flat, and somehow both under-extracted and weirdly bitter at the same time. It took me three attempts to figure out what was happening.
If you have ever struggled with chai that tastes like spicy water, altitude might be a factor you have not considered. Altitude brewing is a real challenge. And across the high Andes, both travelers and locals have figured out interesting solutions.
The Altitude Adjustment: How to Fix Your Brew
The fix is not complicated, but it requires patience. When your maximum water temperature is 11 or 12 degrees lower than sea level, you compensate with time and technique.
Extended Simmer Times for Spices
At sea level, simmering whole spices for three minutes is usually enough to extract most of their flavor. At 3,400 meters and above, push that to five or six minutes. The lower boiling point means slower extraction, so the spices simply need more contact time with the water.
For the tea itself, steep times should increase by about 30 to 50 percent. If you normally steep for four minutes, go to five or six. Watch the color — you want that deep amber-to-russet that signals proper extraction. If it looks pale, it is not ready, regardless of what the clock says.
Here is a rough guide by altitude:
- Sea level to 1,500 meters: Standard recipe, no adjustments needed.
- 1,500 to 2,500 meters: Add one extra minute to both spice simmer and tea steep.
- 2,500 to 3,500 meters: Add two to three extra minutes for spices, one to two for tea.
- Above 3,500 meters: Five to six minutes for spices, five minutes for tea steep. Use crushed spices and grated ginger.
Lid On, Always
At altitude, evaporation is faster because the boiling point is lower and the air is typically much drier. Keep your lid on during the entire simmer. This traps the small amount of steam pressure that develops, nudging the effective temperature slightly higher than an open pot would manage. Every fraction of a degree helps when you are already working with an 11-to-12-degree deficit.
I started keeping the lid on as a habit after my Cusco experiments, and I noticed the difference immediately. The chai came out richer, more aromatic, and more like what I was used to at home. It is such a simple adjustment, but it makes a real impact.
Crush Your Spices Harder
At sea level, cracking a cardamom pod open is enough. At altitude, crush it. Grate your ginger instead of slicing it. Break your cinnamon stick into small pieces. The goal is maximum surface area, because you are compensating for less heat with more exposure to the water. The essential oils still extract — they just need a shorter path out of the spice.
A mortar and pestle is ideal for this. If you do not have one, put your spices in a ziplock bag and whack them with a heavy mug. Not elegant, but effective.
Use More Tea Leaves
This one is counterintuitive. You might think that if your water is not as hot, you should use less tea to avoid bitterness. Actually, the opposite is true. At altitude, you are under-extracting, so bumping your tea quantity by about 25 percent helps compensate. Where you would normally use one teaspoon per cup, use a slightly heaping teaspoon and a quarter.
Andean Herbs That Change the Game
The most interesting thing happening with chai in the Andes is not the altitude adjustment. It is the ingredient substitution. Travelers and local cafe owners have started incorporating Andean herbs into chai-inspired blends, and some of the results are genuinely worth seeking out.
Muna: Andean Mint with an Edge
Muna (Minthostachys mollis) is a woody, aromatic shrub in the mint family native to the high Andes, and it tastes like regular mint turned up to about a seven. More intensely aromatic, slightly more bitter, with an almost eucalyptus-like edge that hits differently from spearmint or peppermint.
In chai, muna works surprisingly well. A few fresh leaves added during the spice simmer bring a brightness that cuts through the heaviness of cinnamon and clove. It plays a role similar to ginger — adding a sharp, clean note that keeps the blend from feeling muddy.
Some cafes in Cusco pair muna with just cardamom and black tea, skipping the heavier spices entirely, and the result is a light, refreshing chai variation that feels perfectly suited to the thin mountain air. It is one of those combinations that makes you wonder why nobody tried it sooner.
If you cannot find fresh muna (which is likely unless you are physically in the Andes), you can approximate the flavor with a mix of fresh peppermint and a tiny pinch of dried oregano. It is not exact, but it captures the herbal intensity.
Coca Leaf: The Local Stimulant
This is the controversial one, so let me be clear: coca leaf as consumed in the Andes is not cocaine. It is the raw, unprocessed leaf of the Erythroxylum coca plant, and it has been used in Andean cultures for thousands of years as a mild stimulant, altitude sickness remedy, and social tradition. Chewing coca leaves or drinking coca tea (mate de coca) is legal and commonplace in Peru and Bolivia. The stimulant effect is roughly comparable to a strong cup of coffee.
Some travelers and cafe owners have started adding coca leaves to chai blends. The leaf contributes a mildly bitter, grassy, slightly numbing flavor that pairs interestingly with traditional chai spices. The stimulant effect stacks with the caffeine in black tea, making for a brew that combats altitude fatigue with particular effectiveness.
A typical preparation adds three or four dried coca leaves during the spice simmer. The flavor integration is subtle — you taste the chai spices first, then a gentle herbal bitterness in the finish that is distinct from tea tannins. It is not for everyone, and it is obviously not something you can replicate outside the Andes (coca leaf is illegal in most other countries), but as a local adaptation it makes complete sense.
Boldo: The Herbal Anchor
Boldo (Peumus boldus) is an aromatic evergreen tree endemic to central Chile, though it also grows in parts of Argentina and Peru. Its leaves are widely used as a digestive tea across South America. The flavor is strongly herbal — somewhere between bay leaf and oregano, with a slight camphor note.
Boldo shows up in chai blends less often than muna, but when it does, it tends to replace cloves. The logic works: both boldo and cloves bring a deep, slightly medicinal warmth, but boldo’s herbal character adds an Andean fingerprint that cloves cannot. It is a true fusion — Indian spice architecture with South American building materials.
The Cusco Chai Cafe Scene
Walk through central Cusco and you will find chai on more menus than you would expect for a city 10,000 kilometers from Mumbai. The backpacker and expat communities have driven demand, and local entrepreneurs have responded with genuine creativity.
A handful of cafes in the San Blas and San Cristobal neighborhoods now serve what I would call Andean masala chai — a real mashup of Indian technique and local ingredients. You might find cardamom and ginger simmered alongside muna and a cinnamon stick, served with hot milk and panela (unrefined cane sugar). Some places offer a “coca chai” that layers coca leaf into a traditional masala base.
La Paz has a smaller but growing scene. The Sopocachi neighborhood has a few cafes where you can get a surprisingly good spiced tea, often incorporating local herbs alongside the standard chai spice lineup.
What struck me about these places is that nobody treats it as a gimmick. The cafe owners I spoke with in Cusco talked about chai the same way they talked about any other part of their menu — as food that makes sense for the climate and the altitude. Warming spices at 3,400 meters on a cold Andean evening is not a novelty. It is common sense. It is the same instinct that has driven chai culture in the Himalayas, in Kashmir, and in every cold-climate community that has access to good spices.
A Recipe for High-Altitude Andean Chai
Here is a recipe that incorporates what I learned across several weeks of trial and error in the Andes. It works at any altitude, but it is specifically designed for the 2,500 to 4,000 meter range.
Ingredients (2 cups)
- 2 cups water
- 3 green cardamom pods, crushed (not just cracked)
- 1-inch ginger, grated fine
- 1 small cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
- 1 clove
- 3 black peppercorns, cracked
- 4-5 fresh muna leaves (or substitute: peppermint plus a small pinch of dried oregano)
- 2 heaping teaspoons Assam CTC or any strong black tea
- 1 cup whole milk
- Sugar or panela to taste
Method
- Bring water to a boil in a covered saucepan. Add all spices and the muna. Simmer covered for five to six minutes — much longer than you would at sea level. Do not lift the lid to check; trust the timing.
- Add tea leaves. Keep the lid on. Steep for five minutes, watching for a deep amber color when you finally peek.
- Add milk, bring back to a simmer. Let it foam up once, then remove from heat.
- Strain, sweeten with panela or sugar, and serve immediately. Do not let it sit — at altitude, heat loss is faster than at sea level.
The extended simmer times are the key. If you taste the result and it still seems under-extracted, add another minute to the spice simmer next time. At extreme altitudes above 4,000 meters, you may need to push the total spice simmer to eight or nine minutes.
Quick Altitude Troubleshooting
- Chai tastes thin and flat: Extend spice simmer by two minutes and increase tea by 25 percent.
- Chai is bitter but weak: You are over-steeping the tea but under-extracting spices. Simmer spices longer before adding tea leaves.
- Spices seem muted: Crush them more aggressively. At altitude, whole spices barely open up.
- Milk does not foam properly: It will not — the lower boiling point means less vigorous bubbling. Focus on getting the milk hot and integrated rather than foamy.
Packing Spices for Altitude Travel
If you are a chai drinker heading to the Andes (or any high-altitude destination), here is what to bring from home:
- Pre-crushed cardamom in a small airtight tin. Whole pods are harder to crush without proper tools at altitude, and you need them crushed.
- Ground ginger as backup. Fresh ginger is available in Cusco and La Paz, but ground ginger works in a pinch and does not spoil.
- A small cinnamon grater or pre-broken sticks. Whole cinnamon sticks in mountain conditions release almost nothing.
- Tea bags of strong Assam as emergency rations. Loose leaf is better, but tea bags dissolve the “where do I find CTC in Peru” problem.
You can build a surprisingly complete chai kit for under ten dollars that fits in a sandwich bag and survives international travel.
Why This Matters Beyond the Andes
The Andean chai story is a reminder that chai is not a fixed recipe — it is a framework. You take the principle (bold tea, aromatic spices, some form of fat or sweetener) and adapt it to what is available and what makes sense for the climate, the altitude, and the local pantry.
Indian households have been doing this for centuries, which is exactly why chai is not a single flavor but a sprawling family of drinks. The fact that the same instinct is playing out in Cusco and La Paz — with muna standing in for mint, coca leaf adding a local stimulant layer, and brewing times stretched to accommodate thin mountain air — is just the latest chapter in a story that has been unfolding along trade routes and migration paths for a very long time.
If you ever find yourself above 3,000 meters with a bag of spices, do not assume your usual recipe will work unchanged. Respect the altitude. Extend your times. Crush your spices hard. And if someone offers you a cup with muna in it, say yes.