Guwahati sits at the point where the Brahmaputra river — one of the world's great rivers, draining the eastern Himalayas through a valley wider than most European countries — narrows between the Nilachal and Shillong plateau hills. It is a city of 1.1 million people, the commercial capital of Assam, and the hub through which all travel to India's eight northeastern states passes.
It is also, given that Assam produces over 50% of India's tea, the city where tea is most deeply embedded in daily commercial and social life. Guwahati hosts the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre — the largest CTC tea auction in the world — which processes nearly 200 million kilograms of Assam tea annually.
How Assamese Chai Differs
The standard chai of Guwahati and Assam differs from North Indian masala chai in ways that surprise visitors who expect uniformity:
Less spice, more tea: The pride in the quality of the tea itself means the Assamese version uses fewer competing spices — cardamom is present, ginger is modest, and the flavour of the Assam CTC is the centre of the cup rather than a base for the masala.
Less milk, more colour: Assam CTC produces such an intensely coloured and flavoured liquor that less milk is needed to produce a satisfying cup. The Assamese chai is often a deeper red-amber than the pale-brown of heavily milked North Indian chai.
Jaggery as the default sweetener: Refined white sugar is common in commercial stalls, but home and traditional-style Assamese chai uses jaggery — particularly khajur gur (date palm jaggery) in winter, which has a distinctive molasses-caramel flavour that transforms the cup.
The Guwahati Tea Auction: Understanding the Source
The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre conducts electronic auctions every Tuesday and Thursday that set the benchmark price for Assam CTC globally. Visiting as an outsider requires advance arrangement through a registered broker, but the adjacent Tea Board of India office on RG Baruah Road has a small visitor display explaining the auction process, grading system, and Assam's tea history.
The experience of tasting tea in a city where the auction price of the same leaf is set twice a week is a particular form of proximity to the source that very few chai drinkers ever achieve.
Kamakhya Temple and the Dawn Chai
Kamakhya Temple — one of the most important Shakti pilgrimage sites in Hinduism, set on the Nilachal Hill above the Brahmaputra — draws pilgrims from across India and Bangladesh. The approach to the temple, particularly at dawn, passes through a gauntlet of chai stalls whose vendors understand that people climbing a hill before sunrise need something strong.
The dawn chai at the Kamakhya approach is made with conviction. No tourist concessions, no sweetness adjustment, no reduced spice. It is the Assamese cup at its most uncompromising, and after the winding hill road in the pre-dawn dark, it is exactly right.
The Northeast's Tea Diversity
Guwahati is also the access point for the extraordinary tea diversity of the broader Northeast. Beyond the CTC-producing lowland gardens of Assam, the hills of Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland produce artisanal teas in tiny quantities — wild-harvested, minimally processed, occasionally fermented. These teas are beginning to appear at Guwahati's specialty food shops, though they remain largely unknown beyond serious tea enthusiasts.
“📍 Northeast IndiaGuwahati is where the tea comes from. Drinking a cup here — properly, attentively, with knowledge of what surrounds you — is as close to the source of Indian chai culture as it is possible to get without standing in the garden itself.