TEA TOURS · AROUND THE WORLD
From the leaf to the cup, wherever it grows.
Tea ceremonies in Kyoto, hill-country estates in Sri Lanka, Dragon Well gardens above West Lake, mint tea in a Marrakesh courtyard and afternoon tea in London. Real reviews of the tea tours and tea-house experiences worth booking, in the places where tea is a way of life.
Worth the trip for the tea alone
Three places where tea is the reason to go.
Plenty of destinations have a nice cup. These three built a whole culture around it: the stillness of a Kyoto ceremony, a Ceylon estate followed leaf to pot, the emperor’s green tea fired by hand above a Chinese lake.
Japan
Kyoto
Nowhere takes a cup of tea more seriously. In a centuries-old machiya, a host whisks stone-ground matcha to a jade froth and sets it before you with a seasonal sweet, every movement part of a ritual refined over four hundred years. South of the city, Uji - the town that gave Japan its finest matcha - grinds its leaf the old way. This is tea as meditation, not refreshment.
- 1 Kyoto: Tea Ceremony in a Traditional Tea House in Kiyomizu
- 2 Kyoto: Tea Ceremony Ju-An at Jotokuji Temple
- 3 Kyoto: 45-Minute Tea Ceremony Lesson Experience
Sri Lanka
Nuwara Eliya
The heart of Ceylon tea sits at six thousand feet, where the air turns cool and the hillsides are quilted in clipped green. You walk a working estate from the bushes the pluckers are stripping to the colonial-era factory where the leaf is withered, rolled and fired, then taste the result on a verandah with the valley dropping away below. Few places let you follow a cup so completely from leaf to pot.
- 1 Nuwara Eliya: Tea Factory and Pickle Waterfalls Tuk Tuk Tour
- 2 Private Tea Tour and Tea Factory
- 3 Nuwaraeliya Tea Factory and WaterFall Tour’s With DMJ Tours
China
Hangzhou
The hills above West Lake grow Longjing, the pan-fired green tea the emperors reserved for themselves. A grower walks you through the terraced gardens, shows you the flat-palmed firing that gives Dragon Well its sword-shaped leaf, and pours the first steeping in a tea house at the water’s edge. To drink it where it is made, fresh from the wok, is to taste why China has prized this leaf for a thousand years.
- 1 One-Day Hangzhou Dragon Well Tea Culture & West Lake Private Tour
- 2 Authentic Hangzhou Longjing Tea Culture Experience Tour
- 3 Half-Day Hangzhou Yunxi Bamboo Forest and Tea Plantation Experience
If you only book one
The tea experience more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every tea tour and tea-house experience on the site, this is the one people come home telling everyone they know to book.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Tea Tours Right Now
Kyoto tea ceremonies, Ceylon estate days, London afternoon tea, Dragon Well gardens. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a place
The best tea tours, place by place.
Kyoto for the ceremony, Nuwara Eliya for the Ceylon estates, Munnar for the hill-country trails, London for afternoon tea. Pick where you are headed and we will show you the tea experiences worth booking there.
Where the tea grows
Three tea worlds, three ways to drink them.
Tea means something different in every one of these places. Start with the kind of cup you want at the end of the day, and pick the region the site covers most deeply.
Kyoto
The whole world in a bowl of matcha.
In a Kyoto tea house, nothing is rushed. A host folds the cloth, warms the bowl and whisks stone-ground matcha to a bright green froth, the steps unchanged in four hundred years. You sit on the tatami, eat a seasonal sweet, and drink in two and a half slow turns of the bowl. Many tours add a kimono, a garden, or a lesson where you whisk your own.
See the best Kyoto tea tours →Nuwara Eliya
Follow a leaf of Ceylon from bush to cup.
Up in the cool of the Sri Lankan hill country, an estate tour walks you through the whole story of a cup of Ceylon. You watch the pluckers work the terraced bushes, step inside a colonial-era factory where the leaf is withered, rolled, oxidised and fired, and end on a verandah with a tasting and the valley falling away below. Many trips pair it with the misty ride up from Kandy on the Little England line.
See the best Nuwara Eliya tea tours →Marrakesh
Where the welcome comes poured from a height.
In Morocco, tea is hospitality made visible. Gunpowder green steeped with a fistful of fresh mint and plenty of sugar, then poured in a long bright ribbon from high above the glass to crown it with foam. Tours fold it into the rhythm of the medina: a pause in a riad courtyard, a rooftop above the souks, a glass pressed on you the moment you sit down.
See the best Marrakesh tea tours →Tokyo
Stillness, a few steps off the busiest streets.
The world’s biggest city keeps small rooms of quiet for tea. A short walk from the crowds, a host welcomes you into a tatami tea room to whisk matcha the formal way, or pours light, grassy sencha in a garden teahouse. Many tours add a kimono fitting, a stroll through a strolling garden, or a hands-on lesson so you can whisk a bowl yourself.
- 1 Tokyo: Traditional Tea Ceremony with a Tea Master
- 2 Dynamic Tokyo: Tokyo Tower, Tea Experience, Bay Cruise Day Tour
- 3 Asakusa: Kimono Tea Ceremony with Matcha and Sweet
How close to the leaf
How close to the leaf do you want to get?
A quiet hour in a Kyoto tea house. A morning walking a working Ceylon estate. A full day deep in the Munnar hills. Pick the kind of day that sounds like yours.
Sit and sip
Kyoto, the quiet ceremony.Forty unhurried minutes in a machiya tea house: matcha whisked to a froth in front of you, a wagashi sweet to balance the bitterness, the slow choreography of the way of tea. Nothing to do but watch, taste and breathe.
Walk the estate
Nuwara Eliya, leaf to cup.A morning on a working Ceylon estate in the cool hill-country air: the pluckers moving through the bushes, the factory where the leaf is withered and rolled and fired, and a tasting of what came off the same slope.
The whole tea trail
Munnar, a full day in the hills.A long day deep into the Nilgiri tea country: kilometres of clipped green hedges folded over the hills, a factory tour through the grading and the tasting room, the viewpoints where the plantations run to the horizon.
Chengdu
A whole afternoon in a bamboo chair.
No city loafs over tea like Chengdu. In the old teahouses of People’s Park and the lanes around Wenshu Monastery, a lidded cup of jasmine or maofeng comes with an endless top-up of hot water, and the afternoon stretches out around it: cards, mahjong, gossip, a roaming ear-cleaner. A guide brings you into the local ritual rather than leaving you watching from the edge.
See all 8 Chengdu tea tours →By place
Pick a place to follow the leaf.
Kyoto for the ceremony. Nuwara Eliya for the Ceylon estates. Munnar for the hill-country trails. London for afternoon tea. Marrakesh for the mint-tea pour. Hangzhou for the Dragon Well gardens.
More places
More places to take your tea.
Tokyo for the tea rooms, Kandy for the hill-country gateway, Chengdu for the teahouse afternoons, Taipei for the oolong slopes. The rest of the tea map, ready when you are.
Three places, three tea days
Pick a place, build the day around the cup.
A matcha morning in Uji, the hill-country train up from Kandy, a grand afternoon tea in London. Three places, three very different ways to spend a day with tea.
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