The Burmese Cheroot

Myanmar People has its own habit like European and Western people who smoke Pipe, Cigarette, or chewing gum. Myanmar people are very fond of smoking Cheroot. Cheroot can be made by corn husk or Thnatphet leaf.

A cheroot, once described as a “Burmese facial feature”, is very common in Burma. The short green, regular varieties, they are every-where — stacked in piles on the market, they are bought in big green bundles or singly. In markets vendors walk around and offer them on trays.

A Myanmar cheroot — Urdu word charut, meaning cigarette or cigar — is filled with a mixture of tobacco and chipped wood.

Mostly the filter is made by corn-husk, and the ingredient of cheroot are the chops of tobacco root, and the pieces of tobacco leaf which are put inside according to particular formula that passes generation to generation.

A filter — of finely chopped leaves from the corn plant — is added and it is rolled up in a dried tha-na-phet leaf.

Many cheroots come from the Shan states in the east of Burma and the Inle area, although they are also made in Bago and the especially big ones near Mandalay. Generally, the cheroots are rolled in small family-run factories by young girls who are paid for each 100 they roll.

At these factories, you see the girls sitting on the floor and busily rolling their cheroots. They are so fast that it is hard to follow their hands. They make several small cheroots in the size of a cigarette per minute. There are no machines — only a pot of glue and a chunk of wood to facilitate the rolling.

The outer tha-na-phet leaves also grow in the mountains of the Shan states. Shan people are recognised by their distinctive coloured turbans when they bring the leaves to the market. It is said that the best cheroots come from Taunggyi, where some bigger factories can be found. In spite of their somewhat acrid smell and rustic appearance, the cheroots are quite mild, with a flavor for which one can acquire a taste. To the cured and rubbed tobacco, sweeteners like jaggery and tamarind are sometimes added, but there are no other additives.

If you are in the area please buy me a few and post them to me. My email address is proplib at gmail dot com - I'll give you my postal

address.http://burmacycle.blogspot.com/2008/08/7-delightful-cigar.html