56. Finding the rhythm of the yaks (Langmusi, Tibet)
The nomad wife wakes up and starts the fire.
She scoops from the pile in the tent corner and fills the iron stove with yak dung. I try to snuggle my sleeping bag closer to warmth, forgetting in my drowsiness that I’m wedged between 6 sleeping Tibetans.
I am staying with a family of Tibetan yak herders while horse trekking in the far west of China. Our days revolve around the rhythm of the yaks, and soon I wake up to help milk them and untie them to graze. A cacophony of yak grunts greets me as I step outside, as the baby yaks yearn against their rope restraints. The mother yaks recognize their baby's unique calls from rows away.
As the nomad woman releases each baby yak, it runs to its mother and begins to nurse. After a couple of minutes, the woman grabs the baby yak’s leg and ties it a few feet away. The woman then begins to milk the mother yak to gather food for her own family. It’s a delicate balance of making sure that both her family and the baby yaks have enough milk.
Yak milk is fundamental to Tibetan food and culture. We make yogurt with some of the milk gathered that day, and churn the rest into butter. We pour the butter over barley flour and knead it into balls of tsampa, the typical Tibetan porridge. The tsampa is served for breakfast alongside yak butter tea.
Yak butter tea is made with butter, hot water, and a pinch of old tea leaves. It tastes more like salty butter soup than tea. Unfortunately, finishing a cup of yak butter tea is nearly impossible. The Tibetans make sure that their guests’ cups are always full.
I loved momentarily belonging in this warm circle of Tibetans.
If you’d like to go, I arranged my trip through Black Tent Cafe