I encountered the most authentic, unique experience of my travels without expecting or asking for it. No amount of tashi deleks* could answer for the real and exclusive Tibetan hospitality I received. From the modest interior of a nomadic tent on a rainy August afternoon, I was introduced to how a family could sustain itself on little more than a healthy herd of yaks.

 

 

Spontaneous homestays are one of the most precious parts of travel. The little habits that others do without thinking come across as so unfamiliar and exotic to me. Observing people is something that I can’t get enough of.

My short stay with a semi-nomadic family at an altitude of 3,500 meters in the south of China’s Gansu province was no exception. I must publish my thoughts before my insights and impressions fade any further.

 

 

Holy Cow: A Rudimentary Understanding Of How Tibetan Nomadism Works

Tsampa. I begin with the mushy, nutritious building block of the Tibetan diet, because everything revolved around it. So much labor seemed to find its purpose in tsampa. It was the chosen start to the day, the preferred mid-afternoon snack. I’ve had several Tibetans name tsampa as their favorite food.

After all, high-altitude diets aren’t the most diverse cuisines.

Tsampa preparation began with slicing a hefty hunk of yellow butter off of a homemade wheel and into a small bowl. Hot water from a kettle was added to melt the butter. Then came The Box.

 

 

Every household must have a tsampa box. It’s as fundamental as the breakfast cereal in our pantries. The interior of The Box was compartmentalized into barley flour and chura, which were a peculiar form of milk curds, dried and hardened into an appearance of powdery crystals. My host family pronounced chura more like ‘chila.’

A spoon usually accompanied The Box. A few scoops of barley flour depending on individual hunger levels, a scoop of chura, stick finger in, and mix. Once the texture began clumping enough to be malleable, the tsampa was shaped in the palm of ones hand, and finally, eaten like a cookie.

 

 

Dairy. The two women of my host family began milking the yaks each morning, before daylight. They would continue milking for eight hours, rain or shine.

The yaks were strung in rows of ropes, with calves positioned across from their mothers. To begin milk flow from a female yak, its calf was released from the rope. The thirsty calf sprinted to its mother. After the baby drank a bit, it was dragged away.

The women milked with both hands and in a deep squat. A waist harness was used to fix the milk bucket in the perfect position to keep the hands free. Any unwanted hairs or bits of puss were smeared on the side of the bucket.

When the udders became dry the baby was brought back to feed and restart the milk flow. It was again dragged away and the mother yak was finished being milked.

 

 

The milk was cooked on the yak-poop-fired stove so that it could be churned into butter. A very basic electric strainer was used to separate the milk fat from the cooked milk. The fat would be made into butter which was then used for tea and tsampa, or sold at the market (so that others could make tsampa). Male yaks could be sold as well (so that other nomads could breed more yaks to produce more milk to make more ingredients for tsampa).

The fat-free milk was fermented and dried into chura curds, which were used to make tsampa.

A small portion of milk was not strained. Ready-made, supermarket yogurt was added to lukewarm milk to create more yogurt. Milk was also a hearty beverage, as Tibetans tolerate lactose indescribably better than most Asians.

Stoves. All year long, dry yak pies are collected and piled together near the house. When lighting the stove, the pies are broken into smaller pieces, piled in, and a piece of wax was thrown on top. The wax was lit with a lighter, and more poo was tossed on top.

 

 

Momos. Quick pinches make a neat dumpling bun which was steamed over a plastic sheet. The filling consisted of chopped beef, garlic, green onion, and salt. Fat and cartilage were not excluded. A plate of momos was a dish Tibetans served for the most important occasions and guests. Boiled organs and intestines stuffed with meat fillings, with a bowl of chili oil for dipping, were often offered to guests as well.

 

 

Tea. Throughout Tibetan regions, butter and salt were added to black tea, which was sipped throughout the day. Tea leaves served as an essential source of vitamins. Butter tea was similarly crucial for Mongolians and Central Asians. Trademark Asian cold climate survival strategy.

Hygiene. We slept on mats that were dragged directly on the earth. Hands were washed infrequently, and cooking was done with bare hands that also handle yak pies. Our fingernails quickly blackened to match those of our hosts. Drinking water was fetched from a small ditch and was cloudy and unfiltered. Because everything was cooked and boiled thoroughly, the conditions won’t make one sick.

 

 

Housing. The ancestors of my host family were fully nomadic. Nowadays, they had a house for the cold season. The tent was used from April to September, and moved to different spots around the pastures every month or two.

Fashion. The women of the Southern Gansu region loved to accessorize with heavy, creamy stones of a coral color. The Tibetan style also iconically did not use the sleeves of outer garments for the arms, and instead kept the sleeves tied at the back of the waist, giving it the look of a skirt.

Language. Younger generations spoke fluent mandarin, but parents usually could only communicate in Tibetan, and relied heavily on their children for translation.

Please note: I just had one day, and this is just one style of nomadism of one tribe of one ethnicity.

 

 

Day 559

20 August 2019

郎木寺 (Láng mù sì) → 玛曲 (Mǎ qǔ)

Hitchhiked: 87 km | Trip Total: 12,758 km

A pair of bickering young men employed by Coca Cola picked us up. They wore matching company jackets, shared beef jerky and milk candies made from Tibetan yaks, and were headed to just where we needed to go.

They kept questioning our motives for going to this unimpressive town. The annual Tibetan horse races had just finished days ago, along with their soda promotion at the event, so they couldn’t find a reason for spending one more minute in Maqu.

I explained that a good friend of mine had insisted I meet his Tibetan lama (monk) buddy at Langmusi Monastery. This lama friend then urged me to delve into the highland pastures of Maqu to stay with his nomadic relatives. I dragged along P, my hitchhiking buddy at the time.

The Coca Cola boys dropped us at the local bus terminal. Both the temperature and rain continued to fall. P called the number of our hosts and before long, a man of stocky build, tanned and roughened by a lifetime of extreme weather conditions, came to greet us with his niece. He wasn’t talkative, his mandarin was limited to basic phrases, but his friendly demeanor relaxed us. We were brought to a market to pick up ponchos and rain boots, before arriving to a warm house in town.

A group of sisters were waiting for us with a kettle of hot tea, embarrassed about the dim lighting due to a power outage. They shyly asked me if I would like any tsampa to go with my tea.

Of course I would!!!

I was offered a wooden tsampa box, which caught me off guard. I received my first Tibetan cooking lesson. With technique that screamed ‘beginner,’ my tsampa never made it to optimal consistency, but was warm and satisfying nonetheless.

 

 

As droopy-eyed as the slow ride through mud and herds of animals had made me, I was wide awake for the end. Reaching the tent felt like I was being taken to a secret hideout far away from any other human settlement, which more or less, was exactly correct.

I tightened my grip on the oh shit handle and felt my blood pressure, and my butt, begin to take flight. Our car was violently lurched at every twist and turn, and everything becomes a twist or turn when you’re off-roading your way up a Tibetan hill. Trust me. With each trauma our vehicle took, I was more convinced that we wouldn’t make it. More like, yes of course we would make it because it’s their home and they’ve been doing this their whole lives, but perhaps I personally wouldn’t make it before we made it as a group.

****

We had a full tent with the father, mother, daughter, two sons, niece, Ping, and myself. One son was studying at a regional monastery to become a lama.

 

 

The eight of us peacefully wrapped momos, stooped around a cutting board by a warm yak-dung-stove. We tried so hard to mimic the father, who pinched each dumpling into a neat, immaculate pouch. We failed miserably. My hosts told me that these steamed beef dumplings were traditionally made and served for the most important occasions and guests.

I knew of the existence of momos from my first Couchsurfing experience, where my Chilean host told me the best thing he ate in four years on the road was Nepali momos. Having longed for them ever since that moment, it turned out that momos found me before I found Nepal.

We feasted, seated in a circle on floor mats, eating with our hands. The men retreated into a winter house further down the hill where the family stays when life gets too cold, and the women went into a small side tent next to P and I.

 

Day 560

21 August 2019

玛曲 (Mǎ qǔ) → 郎木寺 (Láng mù sì)

P and I slept horribly. Tibetan guard dogs have no boundaries. They barked all night long.

I had no time to recover from the night of torture. Determined to milk a yak or two, out into the drizzle I went. The mother and daughter had started this daily chore before sunup. I received a quick lesson from them, and there I was, having these weird, intimate moments with bovines.

 

 

By midday, we were rewarded with sun. I could finally relieve myself at ease, and admire the ecological interactions of the ecosystem before me.

A pair of gray and white birdies, bellies chubby from summer feeding, quarreled and threatened each other in a face off of making one-step advances.

The baby field mice appeared from their burrows, screeching and scurrying after their mice mommas. Many other furry faces peaked out of their holes.

The younger son of the family invited P and I for spin on the back of his horse.

The women of the house decided that my features were Tibetan enough, and the mother went to retrieve her best robes and heirloom jewelry to try on. We took family portraits.

 

 

We were returned to civilization by walking over a hill and meeting another nomadic family, getting picked up at the road, getting seated and fed again in Maqu, and getting driven all the way back to Langmusi.

P and I had no gifts with us, just a jar of honey. Earlier, cash had just made my host mother wave her hand in rejection and stick out her tongue in offense.

I noted that all of them really liked bananas. It was the favorite fruit, a paradox reminding me of the time I was hiking in one of the most biodiverse rainforests of Costa Rica, and I asked my guide what his favorite animal was. His response: the deer.

When I make it back some day, I’d bring moisturizers and bananas. Baby-sized bananas they told me they’d never seen before.

 

 

*Tashi delek is an expression of thanks in the Tibetan language. Non-Tibetans in China pronounced it as 扎西德勒 (zhā xī dé lè).