Try this: A family horse trek across the Tibetan plateau

Access to fascinating out-of-the-way destinations is one of the delights of life in Beijing. Once the can’t-miss sights are ticked off the bucket list, vacation time is well spent avoiding the crowds and exploring China’s vast geography and minority cultures. Making full use of this philosophy, my three kids (13, 11 and 6) and I recently found ourselves at 3,500 metres altitude, milking a yak in freezing temperatures, at 6am.

Our adventure began in Langmusi – Taktsang Lhamo in Tibetan – a busy town that straddles the border of Gansu and Sichuan provinces on the eastern edge of the Qinghai Tibetan Plateau. Langmusi is a popular destination for hikers and Tibetan culture fans who walk to the traditional sky burial grounds on the outskirts of town and wander the atmospheric temples of the nearby monastery.

But our plan was to trek on horses and camp with Tibetan yak herders in their autumn grasslands, high above the town. There was a key problem to overcome: none of us could ride a horse. I was hoping for obedient trail ponies for hopeless horsemen like us. But our horses were strong and spirited and we all listened closely as we were given a back-to-basics riding lesson – stop, go, left, right, on, off – before setting off. We had been told to bring only very few possessions: no changes of clothes, no comfort food. Instead, our horses were loaded with saddle bags filled with two days worth of vegetables and eggs, rice and cooking oil.

The outskirts of town gave way quickly to alpine grasslands. Three of our horses were new mothers and their foals trotted along beside them, the bells around their necks chiming as they moved. Our guides chatted back and forth in Tibetan as we rode. My youngest son shared his saddle with a 17-year-old Tibetan guide and was thrilled to be in the lead as the rest of us rumbled for position behind him.

The two elder kids were fearless: they rode their horses like pros down muddy embankments and crashed across the river before leaping back up the other side and urging the horses on faster through the grasslands ahead. I could see from their faces that the experience was thrilling and they learnt more about horse riding in those first two hours than they would have done in six months of riding lessons. We crossed the White Dragon River and followed its tributaries through wide valleys and across high passes until the landscape opened up into vast fields of grass, dotted with the remains of white, purple and orange summer flowers.

Speedy marmots watched us pass from a safe distance. We stopped for lunch at an abandoned power station, manned now by one cheerful caretaker who became our lunchtime chef: vegetable and yak meat stew followed by an egg and tomato soup. Delicious. After lunch we continued to climb. The view behind us was spectacular. It’s easy to fall into superlatives but this was truly some of the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen. Fields of green and gold grasses, framed by soft, round hills studded with black yak; red rocky escarpments capped with snow and blue, blue sky.

By mid-afternoon we had reached the camp where Tibetan nomads graze their yak and goats for about two months from the end of summer until snow falls in late October. The horses knew they were almost home and began to trot towards a group of tents on the other side of a grassland slung between two mountain ranges. Saddle-sore, but exhilarated, we dismounted to meet our host family, a couple and their seven-year-old son. As the sun went down we joined them collecting yak dung – which is dried for fuel – and watched as hundreds of yak were herded from distant grazing spots and penned behind rope for the night. Each tent was watched over by a dog and we were warned not to leave the tent at night without first telling our host. These were real watchdogs and wary of strangers.

Our bed was a platform of packed down grasses, topped with a sheet. We slept side- by-side under layers of blankets as wind blew through the tent’s door flap and the temperature fell to below freezing. We were told to lie with our feet facing away from the fire: it is a mark of disrespect to point the soles of your feet towards the flame. I woke before 6am to the sound of my Tibetan hostess Nima softly chanting Buddhist prayers as she washed her face and arms in a bowl of water set on the dirt floor.

My hair was full of icicles and I stayed put and watched as Nima filled the cast-iron stove in the middle of the tent with yak dung and wound her black plaits around her head in traditional style, preparing for the day. Outside, the dogs barked and the yak grunted and moaned as the sun rose above snowcapped mountains and the grassland came to life.

We joined Nima to milk the yak and then to churn the milk into butter while other women collected another stash of yak dung and laid it on plastic sheets to dry in the sun. After breakfast the men rode with the yak to the day’s grazing lands. The women tidied the tents. And we joined our guides for the long ride back to Langmusi.

Tibetan Horse Trek organises one to five-day treks from 680RMB that leave Langmusi between mid-April and mid-November.

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