Taplejung Alaichi Ghar (example shop)

The story

About this shop

This shop could be yours. It is an example: there is no cardamom and no Rajendra, nobody is drying pods over a fire for this page, nothing ships, there is nothing to collect in Berlin, and checkout will refuse an order. What it is here for is to show you — if you grow something, cook something, or carry something back in a suitcase — what your own shop on this site would look like. You can have one exactly like it, free, set up in an afternoon: www.martnepali.com/organizers. Now read on, because everything below is written the way I would write it for a real sack of alaichi, and that part is the whole point. Large black cardamom — alaichi, अलैंची — grown by my family in Taplejung and dried the way it has always been dried on that hill. The plants stand in the shade of alder up between roughly 1,400 and 2,000 metres, on the wet eastern ridges where the monsoon arrives hard and the mist sits in the valley until noon. Nepal grows more of this spice than anywhere else in the world, and it comes off the eastern hills — Taplejung and Ilam, and Panchthar, Sankhuwasabha, Terhathum and Bhojpur beside them. We cut in September and October, once the pods have gone deep red-brown at the base and the whole grove smells of it. Then the fire, which is the part nobody sees. The pods go onto a bamboo rack over a slow wood fire — the bhatti — for two or three days, and the smoke goes into them. That smoke IS badi alaichi: woodsmoke, camphor, a little resin. It is why this is nothing like the small green elaichi that goes into mithai, and why a pod dried in a hot-air machine looks identical and tastes of almost nothing. We still dry over fire. It is slower, it is smokier, and it is the only version worth carrying this far. How to use it, if it is new to you: · One pod, cracked with the flat of a knife, into a pot of dal for the last ten minutes. Fish it out before serving. · Two or three into a mutton or buff curry, in at the start with the onion, so the oil takes the smoke before anything else does. · In the whole-spice bloom for biryani or pulao. · Half a pod crushed with ginger in a pot of chiya on a cold morning. Half — a whole one will run the entire cup. Keep the pods whole in a closed jar out of the sun and they hold for a year and more. Ground loses the top of its smell within a few months, which is exactly why the tin here is small. We sell what we grow. When a size runs out it is out until my brother sends the next sack.

The vibe

Gallery

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From order to collection

How it works

1. 1
   Place your order

   Pick what you want at checkout and reserve it in one click — no account needed, and your items are held for you right away.

2. 2
   Pay by bank transfer

   You get the organizer’s bank details and a personal payment reference. Send a normal transfer from any bank app — just remember to include the reference.

3. 3
   Your payment is confirmed

   As soon as the transfer arrives (usually 1–2 business days), the seller confirms it and your QR collection code is emailed to you.

4. 4
   Show the code when you collect

   Bring your code on your phone or on paper. One quick scan when you arrive and your order is handed over.

Still wondering?

Questions