Which country is Karak tea from?
Is Karak from Qatar?
Its origins lie in South Asia, and though this flavourful and milky tea is part of the Qatari tradition today, it actually comes from Indian and Pakistani households were this Karak is a part of their everyday lives and is known mostly as 'Masala Chai', roughly translated as tea with spices, or 'Karak Chai', roughly translated as tea with spices, or ‘Karak Chai’, roughly translated as strong tea with the word ‘Chai’ coming from the Chinese word for tea ‘Cha’.

It’s believed that when the workers came down to Qatar from India and Pakistan in the 1950s - 1960s to take part in building the country’s infrastructure around the time when oil had just been discovered, they found it hard to leave their love of this sweet milky tea behind and bought the recipe with them to Qatar to remind them of home.

When the locals got a taste of this tea, they were inspired, and after adding a few twists here and there adopted it as their own. With time, this tea trickled into Qatar’s local food culture and became ingrained within the rich cultural traditions of Qatar evolving into a hot beverage that is now part of a Qatari’s everyday life.

Today, hundreds of these roadside tea shops and cafeterias are sprinkled all over the city and all of them are busy from morning till late night with a lot of them catering to the influx of Karak drinkers - who stop there, honk their horn, order their Karak, hang around with it and leave all charged up - by staying open 24 hours a day. That’s how important the hot and creamy beverage is to Qatar!

And, if that isn’t enough, Karak is now part of many restaurants here in Qatar and there are even many desserts and sweets like ice-creams and cakes that come in the flavour of Karak.