No matter how many attempts are made to cleave India along religious, linguistic, caste, class or regional lines, one unifying factor remains: a cup of tea.

Without saying this is as many words, an advertisement for a brand of tea (above) takes a lush journey of the senses across India to capture the intimate relationship between people in different parts of the country and their beverage.

“We wanted to showcase the coexistence of tea in Indian culture in a magical, surreal way, and to make it about the tea, but not,” Sachin S Pillai, the director and editor of the film, told Scroll.in. “The idea was to find subtle similarities in the intensely diverse forms of Indian culture through the practice of drinking tea.”

The film was shot in over 15 locations, including Varanasi, Spiti, Kashmir, Jaisalmer, Darjeeling, and Kerala, over a span of six months. “We went between climates, weather and cultures in rapid succession, and encountered more beautiful humans than we could have hoped for,” said Pillai.