A Kham Aid Foundation field report by Pamela Logan

May 8, 2000

Only 250 km from Chengdu as the crow flies one can find Tibetan herdsmen living in lonely windswept valleys, in a fashion almost identical with their distant ancestors. These people are, in every possible way, a million miles removed from Chengdu's teaming streets. A week ago I set out from Kangding with six companions: two American adventurers, two guides-in-training.  Horses being hard to get in spring, we took along two local chaps who acted as porters and route-finders. Here is a record of our two-day journey.

We started at the hamlet of Tsetotang, about 30 km west of Kanding (Dartsendo) on the Sichuan-Tibet highway.  Our route was an ancient footpath, described by Andre Migot and other early travelers as the main caravan trail to points southwest. (see this map).  In the old days, Tsetotang marked the end of the first day's march, but now it's a quick 30 minute taxi-ride. 

Across the river from Tsetotang, within sight of the Chinese stone-and-timber farm-houses, we found our first Tibetan yak-hair tent. There was no one home, so we didn't stop. Heading south along the Zhira Chu (river), after an hour we passed the Sanda valley and its glaciers coming down from the Minya Konka massif. We had left behind "civilization" and were going deeper and deeper into Kham's wild hinterland.

Putu outside his tent

After three and a half hours of walking we came upon a herdsman traveling the same trail. Nearby was his tent, concealed by high shrubs a stone's throw off the path. The man's name was Putu. His yak-hair tent was on the small side, maybe ten meters square. His holdings consisted of 50 yaks, six horses, and seven sheep. This place was one of four camps that he rotated between according to the season, although one of the "camps" was actually a Tibetan stone house. I was surprised when Putu told us that two of his three children, a boy and a girl were currently in primary school. For tuition he was paying 40 yuan (US$5) per child per semester. He had high hopes that they would continue their education.

After our visit with Putu we continued up the Zhira Ko (valley). Three hours later we crossed a pass, Zhira La, about 4200 meters above sea level and marked with a 2 meter high pile of stones. The weather had turned, and now it was snowing as we descended into the Lani Longba Valley. We saw that the trail went straight across the valley, then climbed formidably to a 4694-meter pass. The sky was darkening, the wind was blowing hard, and it seemed unwise to attempt this pass. I didn't know what kind of treacherous terrain might lie on the other side, or how far away shelter might be.

Dropping down to the Lani Chu, we met a boy all alone, tending yaks. He couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 years old, and was scantily clad in torn trousers that revealed knitted long-johns, a sweater and fake leather jacket. We asked him if there was any shelter hereabouts. He said, "my family's tent is over there, on the other side of Zhira La." That was the way we had come, and we were unwilling to retrace our steps. The boy told us there was another tent down-valley where we might find shelter.

Now the wind was blowing harder still, pelting us with thick flakes. We walked down the valley, which was wide, flat, and swampy. To keep our feet out of the bog, we had to jump from one grassy hummock to the next. Zhima, one of the local guys, told me, "You should walk with me in the front, so when we approach a tent, they'll see you're a foreigner and know we're not a party of bandits." So I walked with Zhima at the front of our now-straggling line, while the others brought up the rear.

Zhima's name is unusual--it means "beggar" in Tibetan. He explained, "It's because, when I was a boy, my family was very poor." He had another, more typical two-word Tibetan name, but he didn't use it. Where we had met him, at Tseto Tang, he had been digging caterpillar fungus, which earns good cash for a lot of enterprising people during the May picking season. I was glad that that income, and the 40 yuan we would pay him for his two days of service, meant that his name was not a good fit.

After fifteen minutes of miserable-cold wet walking, we spotted the tent. Zhima hallooed to let the occupants know we were outside, and to tie up whatever guard dogs they had. Strangely enough, however, there were no dogs at this tent, so I followed him fearlessly inside, to the warm, dark interior. Some minutes later, the rest of the party arrived to meet our astonished host.

She was a girl, 18 years old, named Dolma Tso. She was very pretty, but the sudden appearance of three foreigners and four strapping Tibetan men rendered almost speechless.  Dolma Tso immediately got to work putting more brush on the fire, taking it from the huge pile that bisected her large tent. Despite the acrid smoke that poured out, the seven of us huddled around it to warm our numb fingers and toes. 

Inside the tent with her, Dolma Tso had an eight-day old yak that seemed quite sick. She heated a pan of milk, then administered it to the sick calf in a baby-bottle. Despite her care, the animal could hardly stand up, and it seemed as if it would surely die.

At length the man of the tent returned, her uncle Nyima Andron. Their yaks had been with him to pasture, and now the adult animals took up positions around the outside of the tent, standing dully in the blowing snow. The young yaks, half a dozen of them, were brought inside the tent and staked down just inside the entrance, which was separated from the human area by the pile of brush.

Dolma Tso got busy heating a big cauldron of tea. I thought at first it was for us, but when she added chillis and whiskey to the mix, I began to think maybe not. The spindly sticks burned fast, so Shiro Jatsen, one of our guides-in-training, kept feeding the fire. Meanwhile Tseren Penlo, the other guide, who comes from a herding family in is therefore an expert on these matters, operated the tricky leather bellows. It was a lot of work to keep that fire going, and it produced a lot of smoke which made it dangerous to stand up inside the tent for very long. Dolma Tso told us that in winter they burned yak dung, which it was no more convenient than brush but easier to find on the snow-covered landscape. There was no forest nearby from which to gather better fuel.

When the tea mixture in the cauldron was hot, Dolma Tso and her uncle took it outside and fed it to the yaks, "to warm them up," they explained. She carried a pouch of dry tsampa and gave a little to each animal, which surprised Tseren Penlo since that is not the custom in Dzadzuka where he comes from. Dolma Tso also kneaded some tsampa with tea to make dough that she fed to the young yaks tethered inside the tent.

I ventured outside in hopes of seeing the evening milking, but there was no such thing going on. Generally speaking, animals are in poor condition after the long hungry winter, and, moreover, the cows have babies to feed, so there is little milk to spare for people. Dolma Tso said that they only milk 5 or 6 yaks in this season, out of their herd of fifty. Later on we would have tsampa made with tea only--no butter--a temporary hardship for us but a continuing one for Dolma Tso and her uncle.

After the animals had been tended, our hosts were able to sit down and talk with us. Snow was piling up on the outside of the loosely-woven tent fabric, so Dolma Tso had to get up and bang on the ceiling with a stick to knock it off, lest the pile-up collapse their shelter. I asked her, "Which do you like living in more, a house or a tent?"

"A house," she replied. Nyima Andron's brother had a farm-house over the pass in a western valley, where he lived with his wife and the other children. Nyima Andron himself was not married. This extended family, like most in the region, survives by a mixture of farming and herding, some members being sent to tend the animals on high pastures while others remain in the village to till the fields.

The village-dwelling brother, we learned, had three children, two of whom were in school, the youngest being too little. Dolma Tso herself had never been to school. I asked her, "What is your biggest problem living out here?"

She replied, "Snow and robbers." She said that not long ago some robbers had made off with yaks from their herd, which was already rather small. It was so small, in fact, that they had not dared to slaughter any animals for at least the last a year and a half. That meant that the family had no meat, except for the little they might trade for.

I asked her uncle, "has your life gotten harder or easier in the last ten years?" He said, "harder," but then allowed as his brother's life was harder still, since he has to work his farm and raise his three children. Nyima Andron himself had been a farmer until 1960 when he received some animals as a result of government redistribution of herds. Nyima Andron did feel that his life was easier than his father's.

We asked about the family's finances. Typical of most rural Tibetan families, they produced their own food and therefore lived largely outside the cash economy. They did pay 400 yuan (US$50) a year to buy vaccine for the animals, which Nyima Andron felt was expensive. When we asked about taxes, he said that they pay a mixture of butter, barley, and cash totally 800 yuan's worth, which seemed quite high, especially compared to the Putu's family, which pays annually only one tenth of a jin of butter per yak in their herd (a jin is half a kilogram).

As the light dimmed, Dolma Tso lit a small oil lamp. Two of our party went off to sleep in another tent nearby, while the rest of us bedded down in rows on top of piled sacks, pelts, and kindling. We had our own sleeping bags and blankets, which was fortunate because our hosts certainly had none to spare. There was no hot water for washing, as the fire had gone out, and most of us didn't bother to brush our teeth. Laying back on our cozy beds, we fell asleep listening to the sound of snow falling onto tent fabric. The young yaks in the tent shuffled around on their tethers, and occasionally relieved themselves on the dirt floor.

In the morning we waited until well after first light before daring to rise from our beds. The first thing that Dolma Tso did after starting the fire was boil up some dried radishes and tea for the animals. After this had been done, she set about making tea for everyone. I looked outside to see a dismaying amount of snow covering the land. How could we find the trail over the mountains? But my companions said it was no problem, and they were eager to get going. We took out some parting gifts of food such as peanuts and raisins--things that these herdsmen rarely see, and which they made a great show of reluctance to accept. Then we headed off into the swirling snow.

Nyima Andron had told us that the snow was especially thick around his campsite, but the going would not be too hard up-valley, and on the pass. He proved to be right it was only ankle deep on the approach. He said he could reach the pass in half an hour, but it took us double that time. From a few spots swept clear by the wind, we pried up some stones to toss onto the great mani pile marking the summit, and shouted "Lha so - O!" to give thanks to the gods for seeing us safely up this mountain.

Going down from the pass, which is marked at Ajiako on my map, we had to slog though knee-deep drifts for a short distance before the going got easier. We descended through shrubs, then light spruce forest as the snow-drifts diminished and disappeared.  Sloshy wet flakes continued to float down from the heavens, and the going was muddy. Around noontime we reached another tent, surrounded by conifer forest.

This encampment was inhabited by a couple.  Some neighbors soon appeared to have a look at the strange party of travelers. The couple had, they told us proudly, a son now attending the Southwest Minority University in Chengdu. Their two other children were farmers living in one of the houses down-valley. This couple was clearly better off than the other tent-dwelling people we visited. For one thing, they had solid pieces of wood for their fire, which were burning hot and strong and almost smokeless.

An hour later we came to the outskirts of Ajia Dzong, a farming district of scattered houses. Most of the herdsmen we had met earlier had family and winter homes in this district.  A little bit later our trail turned into a rough but motorable road. I was astonished to see a Tibetan house with a satellite dish, and a Dongfeng truck parked outside. Electric poles marching up the valley showed how these people got their power. My companion Shiro Jatsen, who hails from a village at  the valley bottom, told me that electrification had arrived some ten years earlier.

We walked for three or four more hours, but still had not reached our destination: Shiro's house.  The snow turned to rain, then sunshine, then a sudden intense storm of hail. We came to the homes of Zhima and our other porter Tashi Tsering. Three small children came running out of two of the houses, overjoyed to see their fathers. Zhima and his friend begged us to leave them there, so after giving them their wages, we took their loads and continued onward by ourselves.

Home of prosperous family in Ajia Dzong, with satellite dish for television reception, and a Dongfeng truck parked at right.

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