Yak of All Trades: New Year on the Tibetan Plateau | Travel
我在西藏高原放牧牦牛，过藏历新年，体验变化中的藏族文化
“Eat more,” Kelsang insists. He passes the metal bowl to me, filled to the brim with boiled pieces of meat the size of clenched fists. “Eat more. You must be hungry after such a long trip.” The meat tastes like beef, perhaps with the gaminess of lamb, but it has the distinct musky tone of yak.
My Tibetan hosts are sitting around the stove, fueled with yak dung and unceasingly radiating heat to all corners of the room. When the lid is lifted, just for a moment, the orange glow of the smoldering dung cakes reflect in the golden ornaments, prayer mills, and shrines that ordain the walls.
My hosts have been eagerly awaiting my arrival from Chengdu, the lowland capital of western China’s Sichuan province, to their small cottage high up on the Tibetan Plateau, some 3,500 meters above sea level. I have long wanted to explore Tibetan culture, and had traveled to this part of northern Sichuan to assist Kelsang’s family of yak herders during the Tibetan New Year celebrations, known as Losar. So far, I am not quite sure how—or if—I can help.
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