Press a tea cake and the centre becomes the hardest place to reach. Everything still open to you happens at the rim.

Issue 18 works from there — the outer line, the point of entry, the place where resistance gives. A Japanese tattoo tradition whose finest work stays hidden under clothing, revealed only when it matters. A Portland teahouse where tea is poured a river's width from the tear gas. A week in a monastery that promised tea and delivered discipline. Elephants crossing Assam's plantations because the land they were left is underwater half the year. And the reason half the world says cha.

Every story here starts where the ground gets uncertain. That's why they're worth telling.