Tibetan nomads. The last nomads of Tibet. Ritual around Mount Kailash

Introduction

Tibetan nomads, traditionally known as Drokpa (འབྲོག་པ།), are the heirs to an amazing ancient way of life that has undergone many changes over the past decades. Today, their way of life faces the challenges of modernization. But despite this, it is still quite simple, and their belongings are few. In the distant pastures of the Tibetan Plateau, nomads graze yaks, sheep and horses. Although most of these groups are becoming semi-nomadic today, they continue to live in tents almost all year round.

They sleep in tents on thin bedding around a central stove where they cook their food and make butter tea. Their food is usually limited to tsampa, a dough made from roasted barley flour, dried yak meat and dairy products such as cheese, butter and yogurt. Since there are no trees in the nomadic areas, the main fuel for the stoves is dry yak dung. They live in harsh conditions defined by the high altitude of the area and its cold and long winters, and although many of them now have homes in which to spend the cold season, they still establish camps for at least 6-8 months a year .

Currently, despite urbanization, all areas of the Tibetan Plateau are still densely populated by nomads. Many nomadic groups can also be found in parts of Sichuan and Qinghai.

Emanuele and Basilio

Over the past two years, we, Emmanuel Assini and Basilio Maritano, have had the opportunity to experience nomadic customs and traditions during our trips to Ladakh and Western Sichuan. Then, in the fall of 2015, while living in Vienna, we both read Namkhai Norbu's book Travels Among the Tibetan Nomads, a summary of the main cultural aspects of the culture of the Tibetan nomads living in the areas of Sertha and Dzachuka. The book is based on the diaries of then seventeen-year-old Namkhai Norbu, who describes his impressions of the eighteen tribes living in the area. Addressed to the general public interested in Tibetan culture, the book was published by Shang Shung Publishing House in 1983. This reading, as well as our personal impressions, inspired us to organize a trip surrounded by Tibetan nomads living in the same area. We were driven by the desire to better understand what remained of their ancient traditions. This was the main reason that brought us to China. We arrived there on April 20, 2016, and until the end of June we traveled through Western Sichuan and Southern Qinghai, especially Dzachuka and Sertha, to understand first-hand what the traditional lifestyle of Tibetan nomads is like. During this time we visited schools and monasteries, and also spent some time with a Tibetan nomadic family, learning about their culture and collecting stories and visual material.

Today is the ninth of June. We stayed in the Tibetan provinces of Kham and Amdo in China for almost seven weeks. It all started eight months ago when we started planning this trip, which is now coming to an end.

It seems like just yesterday we were in Vienna and discussed the possibility of launching a project in this area. Everything seemed so distant and unreal that it could only be realized in our imagination. And here we are today, writing this report on the busy few weeks leading up to the end of our journey. Without experiencing the slightest sadness, we realize how time has flown by, and soon we will return to Europe with a lot of memories and materials to work with.

Towards the end of April, after several days of preparation, we left the capital of Sichuan, Chengdu. After a six-hour bus ride, we arrived at Kangding, a checkpoint in Kham province. We ourselves chose to hitchhike to save on travel costs and also to interact directly with the locals. And it was the best choice. Laden with luggage and knowing only a few words of Chinese and Tibetan, we received assistance at every stage of our long journey. Today we can say for sure that we hitchhiked at least 3,000 km along the road that leads from Kangding to Xining and back to Chengdu, crossing canyons, high-mountain gorges and vast grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. As two young travelers open to cultural influences, we traversed much of Tibet “open” to foreigners, asking questions, observing, listening to every opinion and discovering something new every day. We have experienced the hospitality of a culture that, divided between pastures and settlements, between mountains and cities, and mixed with different ethnic groups, is moving in an unknown direction that, I daresay, will be full of surprises.

Throughout our journey, thanks to hitchhiking and some luck, we met many different people and heard many different opinions. From the Chinese policeman who showed us hospitality, to the elderly monk who allowed us to pitch a tent in his garden, to the nomad who returned from India less than a year ago after 20 years away, all the people we met shared their views with us, allowing us learn more about this culture that is undergoing a process of change.

We are happy to share these impressions with the readers of the Mirror in order to also remember these extremely important moments of our travels and capture them on paper. Therefore, instead of giving a detailed account of the important moments of our trip, we decided to describe a brief episode that happened in the last few days and was of great importance to us.

A few days ago, after a long drive with only a few short stops, we arrived in the village of Shiuma, where we enjoyed spending a few days in the company of an elderly nomad named Aolei, staying at his house located 30 minutes from the village. A few days later we got acquainted with his daily routine and learned a lot of interesting things.

At this time, all nomadic families are busy searchingyarsagumba –Chinese caterpillar mushroom. This small, expensive mushroom often accounts for 80% of these families' annual income. So during the seasonYarsagumbaEven children are busy searching for it. Only the elderly stay at home to take on household responsibilities, while the rest of the family spends their days climbing the surrounding mountains with their eyes fixed on the ground.

So we were left alone with Apa Aolei, a cheerful old man who was very happy to host us. Self-taught and dedicated to his religious practice all day, Aolei told us a lot about his youth and his family and expressed very interesting opinions about the cultural changes taking place in Tibet.

Upon entering his house, we were amazed by the number of books on the typical wooden shelves, where photos of teachers, the Dalai Lama, religious scriptures and various other items are usually kept. We visited many other families in the area and rarely did we see more than a couple of books in the house. So we asked him about it. He replied that many of these books are classical, historical and religious texts written by scholars who are very famous in Tibet and China. In addition, one of his two sons received his education in Japan, which is extremely rare for this area.

Since Aolei himself did not have the opportunity to go to school, it was very important to him that at least one of his sons received a good education, and he was very pleased with this. The entire bookshelf was about five meters long and, in addition to being filled with books and objects, was also lined with badges and trophies collected by his son during his learned quest. Moreover, many of these icons occupied a higher position than where Buddhist texts and photographs of teachers are usually kept. This was a clear sign of how important education was considered in his home.

Once again our curiosity prompted us to ask questions.

Apa Aolei experienced the Cultural Revolution when he was 8 years old. He was the son of a nomadic family who lived in a tent all year round. When he was a teenager, his life after the "revolution" was very poor - they spent the harsh Tibetan winters in a tent with meager food supplies. Despite this, he had good memories, which he shared with us, talking about nomadic costumes and traditional tents made from yak wool, and how the land was still divided equally among all the villagers. Today, without exception, all areas of the pasture are fenced off by the Chinese government. Each and every member of the family must learn all kinds of work, such as spinning yak wool to make clothes, pitching a tent, or building a kitchen out of mud—all things that the new generation cannot do.

When his children were born, his family was able to build a winter home with the help of a government grant. This is how most nomadic families live today: in winter - in houses, in summer - in tents. Today's tents are modern and easier to set up.

As for religious life, Aolei devoted himself entirely to it. Even though he did not have the opportunity to go to school, he studied on his own so that he could read religious scriptures. He told us with great honesty that he had not been able to acquire a deep knowledge of Buddhism, but that years later he had discovered the ability to predict the future using dice. This practice is calledmoand is usually performed by monks and lamas to make important decisions. The answers on the dice are believed to come from Manjushri himself, the bodhisattva of wisdom. After the Cultural Revolution, religious practice was problematic. Aolei told us that in the 70s, families often met in secret to practice away from the eyes of the Chinese. Today, he says, fortunately, it is possible to practice openly.

Aolei told us a lot: too much to fit into one article. It was an amazing experience for us to be with him and listen to his views on the changes that have occurred in the last fifty years.

She made us smile and think deeply about the cultural changes in the uplands of Tibet, whose new generations will bear great responsibility for the future. After mentioning the evolution of Tibetan culture and the differences from his youth, Aolei wanted to leave a message for the youth regarding the continuation of traditions in the near future.

To paraphrase a little, he said the following: “In my youth, when nomadic families killed a sheep for food, they used every single part of the body from head to skin, so as not to waste the life of this animal, even if it required a lot of work. Likewise, young Tibetans should cherish their traditions and not neglect any aspect of their cultural heritage just because it may cause discomfort. For example, a traditional Tibetan dress may be considered old-fashioned or too heavy. They should keep eatingtsampa,dress traditionally and preserve their cultural values.”

We believe that this statement hides in its simplicity a large number of issues that require reflection to better understand the reality of nomads today. For our part, we do our best to return home with a full vision, which we hope to share with the members of the Community.

You read about Tibetan nomads and you are surprised: in our time, someone leads such a way of life. They live in unusually difficult natural conditions: firstly, at altitudes of 4-5 thousand meters, where, as is known, the oxygen level is much lower; secondly, at such altitudes there is an increased level of solar radiation, which for ordinary people is fraught with dry skin and eye diseases; and finally, very low temperatures (down to -40 in winter) plus a piercing wind. Genetically, over hundreds of years, the body of the Tibetan nomads adapted to such conditions.

Nomads live in tents made from yak skins or matted wool. Several generations and families live inside such an awning. The tent has a fireplace for cooking (the chimney is a hole at the top of the tent), an altar for prayer and some simple kitchen utensils. No tables, chairs, beds or other furniture for you, not to mention the TV.

The life of nomads directly depends on the animals they keep. They divide them into “black” - these are yaks, and “white” - these are sheep and goats. The number of “blacks” has always been an indicator of prosperity; rich families could have up to 1000 heads of yak. The average family usually has 70 yak and 200 sheep or goats.
Yak is life for a nomad. It provides material for the construction of tents, wool for making clothes, dried yak cakes serve as fuel, milk, from which yogurt, cheese and butter are also prepared (by the way, for a Tibetan, “yak milk” sounds the same as for us, for example, “goat milk”, after all, for them, yak is he, and it is called dri) - this is the main diet of a nomad, and dried yak meat is enough for many months of nomadic life.

It must be said that the food of nomads is not very diverse. In addition to the already mentioned dairy products and yak meat, every day the nomads prepare the so-called tsampa - this is roasted barley flour, and drink several mugs of special tea prepared with milk, salt and butter.

Nomads live in families, and it is not uncommon for families where a woman has several husbands, usually brothers. Children born in such a marriage are considered the children of the older brother. Polygamy also occurs, or for example, a son can share a wife with his father (or a father with his son, if this is not his mother, but his stepmother). All this is considered normal among nomads. In fact, such marriages are officially prohibited by law, but who enforces the law at such heights and in places where there are no official representatives of the authorities. So such marriages are still practiced.

Nomads in Xinjiang. China wants them to settle down to protect their grazing lands. Photo: Gilles Sabry (for The New York Times)

If modern material wealth is a measure of success, then Gere, a fifty-nine-year-old sheep and yak herder from the western province of Qinghai in China, must be a happy man.

It has been two years since the Chinese government forced him to sell his livestock and move to a low concrete house on the windswept Tibetan plateau. During this time, Gere and his family bought a washing machine, a refrigerator and a color television that broadcast historical dramas in Chinese directly into their whitewashed living room.

Like many Tibetans, Gere has only one name and is now deeply saddened. Along with hundreds of thousands of other cattle herders across China, displaced over the past decade in bleak towns, he is unemployed, deeply in debt and dependent on ever-dwindling government subsidies to buy the milk, meat and wool he needs. previously received from their own herd.

“We are not starving, but we have lost the way of life that our ancestors followed for thousands of years,” says Gere.

The Chinese government is now in the final stages of an ambitious social engineering project. This campaign to resettle and settle the millions of cattle drivers who once roamed China's borderlands has been going on for 15 years. By the end of this year, Beijing promises to resettle the remaining 1.2 million nomads into cities, providing them with access to schools, electricity and modern healthcare.

The official media speaks glowingly of the former nomads as filled with gratitude for being saved from their primitive way of life. “The shepherds from Qinghai, who wandered for generations in search of water and pasture, in just five years achieved what they had been achieving for a thousand years. They have taken a huge step towards modernity, reports the state publication Femer's Daily in a front-page article. “The Communist Party's directives to provide benefits to shepherds are like the warm breath of spring, refreshing the green meadows and touching their hearts.”

However, the guidelines, partly based on the official view that livestock grazing harms grasslands, are increasingly controversial. According to Chinese and foreign ecologists, the scientific basis for the resettlement of nomads is highly questionable. Anthropologists who studied government-established resettlement centers documented chronic unemployment, alcoholism, and the disappearance of thousands of years of tradition.

In citing the huge disparity in earnings between the prosperous eastern provinces and the poor regions of the far west, Chinese economists point to the fact that government planners have not yet achieved their stated goal of increasing the incomes of former cattle drovers.

The government spent $3.45 billion on its recent resettlement program, yet most displaced nomads are faring poorly. Residents of major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai earn on average twice as much as their counterparts in Tibet and Xinjiang, the western territories bordering Central Asia. Official statistics show that this gap has widened in recent years.

Human rights activists note that resettlement is often carried out under duress - people accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle feel lost in bleak, isolated villages. In Inner Mongolia and Tibet, displaced herders stage almost weekly protests that are being suppressed with increasing brutality by security forces.

“The idea of ​​herders destroying grasslands is just an excuse to push out people who the Chinese government considers to be living a backward lifestyle,” says Engebatu Togochog, director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center in New York. “They promise good jobs and nice houses, and only later do the shepherds realize that none of this is true.”

In Xilinhot, a coal-rich region of Inner Mongolia, displaced people, many of them uneducated, say they were tricked into signing contracts whose contents they struggled to understand. One such man is sixty-three-year-old Tsokkhochir, whose wife and three daughters were among the first hundred families to move to the village of Xingkang, a row of shabby brick houses in the shadow of two power plants and a steel mill that blankets them with soot emissions.

In 2003, he says, officials forced him to sell 20 of his horses and 300 sheep, then gave him loans to buy two dairy cows imported from Australia. Since then, his herd has grown to 13 animals, but Tsokkhochir says falling milk prices and high food prices mean they are struggling to make ends meet.

Like all native Mongolians, Tsokkhochir's face is covered with a dark sun tan, and he is also very emotional, especially when he talks about his hardships, while Tsokkhochir's wife averts her eyes to the side.
Keeping cows is not a suitable occupation for the harsh Mongolian winters. Cows often suffer from pneumonia and their udders are frozen. Frequent dust storms carry small stones and dirt into their mouths. Government-promised animal feed subsidies are not coming.

Gere, a fifty-nine-year-old former shepherd from the western province of Qinghai, with his granddaughter.
Forced to sell his herd and move into a house, he was left jobless and deeply in debt.
Photo: Gilles Sabry (for The New York Times)

The youth of Xingkang, cut off from the pastures and without any skills to find a job at the iron and steel plant, are leaving the area to find work in other regions of China. “This place is not suitable for people to live,” says Tsokkhochir.

Not all residents are unhappy with this state of affairs. Thirty-four-year-old Bator, a sheep trader who grew up on the pastures, now lives in one of the new high-rise buildings built on Xilinhot's wide central streets. About once a month, to see his clients in Beijing, he drives 380 miles on smooth highways that have replaced potholed roads. “Before, to get from my hometown to Xilinhot, I had to travel all day and get stuck in ditches,” he says. “Now it only takes 40 minutes.” Bator is very talkative, graduated from college and speaks fluent Chinese. He criticizes neighbors who, he says, are waiting for government subsidies rather than embracing the new economy, which is heavily tied to coal mining.

He feels some nostalgia for the Mongolian nomadic life of foraging in times of drought, sleeping in yurts and cooking over dung fires. “Who needs horses now when there are cars? he says as he drives through the bustling center of Xilinhot. “Are there still cowboys in America?”

Experts say the resettlement efforts also serve other purposes, often different from official political statements: the Communist Party is trying to tighten its control over people who have lived on the margins of Chinese society for too long.

Nicolas Bequelin, director of Amnesty International's East Asia branch, says the struggle between organized farmers and free herders is nothing new, but the Chinese government has taken it to a whole new level. “These resettlement campaigns can be called “Stalinist” in their scope and ambition. They don't take into account at all what the people in these communities want,” he says. “In a matter of years, the government is destroying entire indigenous cultures.”

If you look at a map of China, it becomes clear why the Communist Party has been looking for ways to tame cattle drovers for a long time. Grasslands cover more than 40 percent of China, from Xinjiang in the far west to the vast steppes of Inner Mongolia in the north. These lands have traditionally been home to Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Manchus and a host of other ethnic minorities who resist Beijing's oppressive rule.

For most Han Chinese, the nomadic peoples inspire admiration and fear. The longest periods of enemy conquests in China occurred precisely during the raids of nomadic peoples. For example, the Mongol warriors of Kublai Khan and his cavalry ruled China for almost a century from 1271.

“These territories have always been difficult to understand, difficult to manage from the outside. For China, it was a place of banditry, guerrilla warfare, and a homeland of people who were steadfastly opposed to integration, says Charlene E. Maclay, an anthropologist at Reed College in Oregon who studies Tibetan communities in China. “But at the moment the government feels that it has enough strength and resources to bring these people into society.”

Although efforts to tame the borderlands began in 1949 after Mao Zedong came to power, they were reinvigorated in 2000 with the launch of the “Go West” campaign, designed to transform and modernize Xinjiang and the Tibetan-inhabited regions through major infrastructure investments. resettlement of nomads and migration of Han Chinese.

The more recent Ecological Resettlement program, launched in 2003, focused on reclamation of damaged pasture areas by reducing grazing.

The new town of Madoy, where Gere and his family moved, was the first of the so-called “socialist villages” built in the Amdo region of Qinghai province, populated mainly by Tibetans and located at an altitude of about 4,000 meters above sea level. About a decade ago, as the resettlement was gaining momentum, the government said grazing was endangering the vast watershed that feeds the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong rivers, China's most important waterways. Overall, the government says it is relocating more than half a million nomads and a million animals from the ecologically fragile grasslands of Qinghai province.

Gere says he laughed at government claims that his 160 yaks and 400 sheep were damaging pastures, but he was given no choice but to sell them. “Only a fool would disobey the authorities,” says Gere. “The grazing of our livestock for thousands of years did not create the slightest problem, and now suddenly they are trumpeting the damage.”

The one-time compensation received from the government, as well as the money received from the sale of livestock, was not enough for much. Gere says most of that money went toward animal feed and water taxes, and he also spent about $3,200 to build the family a new two-bedroom home.

While policies vary across the board, resettled herders pay on average about 30 percent of the cost of their new government-built homes, according to official data. Most are given subsidies on the condition that the recipient abandons their nomadic lifestyle. Gere says the $965 annual payment over a five-year period was $300 less than promised. “One day the subsidies will stop, and then I don’t know what we’ll do.”

Many houses in Madoya lack toilets or running water. Residents complain about cracks in walls, leaking roofs and unfinished sidewalks. But their anger is also rooted in the loss of independence, pressures to manage a cash economy and the belief that resettlement is based on false promises that they will one day be allowed to return.

Jarmila Ptackova, an anthropologist at the Czech Academy of Sciences who studies Tibetan settler communities, says government resettlement programs have made it easier for former nomads to access medicine and education. Some enterprising Tibetans have even managed to become rich, she says, but most people resent the rapidity and forced aspect of the relocation. “Decisions about all this were made without their input,” she says.

Nomads in Xinjiang. Photo: Gilles Sabry (for The New York Times)

These types of grievances play a significant role in civil unrest, especially in Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Since 2009, more than 140 Tibetans, more than twenty of them nomads, have self-immolated to protest coercive political measures. They are protesting restrictions on religious practices and mining on environmentally sensitive lands. The latest such self-immolation occurred on Thursday in a town near Madoya.

Over the past few years, authorities in Inner Mongolia have arrested dozens of former cattle herders, including seventeen just last month in Tongliao municipality, protesting the confiscation of 4,000 hectares of land.

This year, dozens of Xinkang villagers carrying banners reading “We want to go home” and “We want to survive” marched on the government building and clashed with street police, the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center reported.

Chinese scientists, whose research once served as the official basis for the relocation, have become increasingly critical of the government. Some scientists, such as Li Wenyun, a professor of environmental management at Peking University, have found that the movement of large numbers of mahouts into cities exacerbates poverty and water shortages.

Professor Li declined to be interviewed, citing political considerations. But in published studies, she points out that traditional grazing methods have beneficial effects on soil health. “We believe that food production systems, such as nomadic pastoralism, that have been sustainable for centuries and rely on minimal soil irrigation, are the best choice,” Lee writes in a recent article in the journal Land Use Strategies.

Gere recently erected his former home, a black six-pack yak tent, on the side of the highway. He plans to develop it as a small roadside establishment for Chinese tourists. “We will serve milk tea and dried yak meat,” he says hopefully. Then, twirling a bunch of keys tied to his belt in his hands, Gere turned away, feeling emotional. “We used to carry knives,” he said. “Now we have to carry the keys with us.”

Andrew Jacobs

Everything was as the maps and photographs predicted: the asphalt road goes towards the TAR border, we jump out of the last friendly truck, throw our backpacks behind our backs and go to the red plains. The height is more than four thousand meters. Rare specks of housing are scattered all the way to the horizon – at a distance of tens of kilometers from each other: many nomads spend the coldest months in a permanent place, in houses. However, next to almost every house there is a blue tent that is already familiar to us. It seems that the Tibetans really appreciated them.

Nomads are rich people. Each yak sold for meat (their meat is highly valued and willingly bought by Chinese factories) brings about 3 thousand yuan (in a country where you can have a great breakfast for 7, this is a lot of money). And every self-respecting nomadic family has several hundred yaks. With this money, nomads build beautiful monasteries and good roads. Roads are needed - the plateau in these parts is very swampy, cattle can easily pass over the soft hummocks, but the shiny chrome motorcycles, the pride and joy of the dashing Tibetan riders of the 21st century, stall and get stuck.

Rider of Changtang

At the next turn, furry black balls roll out towards us with a furious bark. Tibetan Mastiffs! Paralyzed, we can only take our only trekking pole at the ready and wait for the outcome. A stone flies by with a whistle, followed by a second one - a dashing robber in a vest, as she runs, picks up pebbles from the ground, spins them with a sling and accurately releases them towards the dogs, their heels already sparkling somewhere in the hills.

Slings knitted from yak wool have been used by Amdo nomads since ancient times.

Our beautiful savior

The Tibetan Mastiff, another pride of the Changtang nomads, is a legendary and ancient breed, a formidable protector and a reliable shepherd assistant. Since time immemorial, these dogs have guarded Tibetan monasteries and chased yaks in mountain pastures. They say that a white spot on the chest is a sign of a brave heart, and the light spots above the eyes are another pair of eyes that can discern a person’s good and bad intentions.

The rescued are taken to a blue tent to drink tea. Dear grandma! How we miss homemade cha-sum, offered from the bottom of our hearts, and an open smile! Your rancid yak butter became the sweetest of all delicacies for us; it fell like a balm on the hearts saddened by Lhasa. We came here in search of another Tibet, trying to return to the past; in search of people who continue to stubbornly move from year to year after their herds, live in woolen tents among the snow-capped mountains and build monasteries. And they found your cozy frame tent, brand new minivans and motorcycles by the fence. And they realized: it also happens that the external attributes of the Big World change little the essence. Nobody bought you with these benefits. With a light heart you will give them to make a pilgrimage to Lhasa, which is still sacred to you, and with a light tread you will go to the passes behind your herds. I really want to believe this.

Try to guess the purpose and origin of this picturesque fence?

We perked up and moved on with renewed vigor. Beyond the pass, behind the camps with blue tents and traditional black tents and their inhabitants, where we expect to stay longer, we may be waiting for the solution to an old mystery that has tormented Sasha since his first expedition to Tibet in 2003.

... From behind a distant ridge, heavy blue clouds moved in at cruising speed, as only happens high in the mountains, a piercing wind blew, and the question of the nearest tent arose. The closest, alas, was only ours, the expeditionary one. There was no potable water around, I really didn’t want to get up for a dry night, and the prospects loomed gloomy. Out of nowhere (as it should be according to the laws of the genre), a white jeep appeared on a deserted dirt road behind us. Before we had time to rejoice, we saw a promising red and blue flashing light on its roof. It doesn't get any easier hour by hour... Helpful memory draws pictures of the very recent past, although here we are absolutely legal. Having dropped the hand already raised in the international gesture, we get off the road just in case.
Having caught up with us, the jeep opens all the doors, sly Tibetan faces look out over strict Chinese shoulder straps.
- Get in, it’s pouring now! We'll give you a lift to Rome. (Rome was the only point known to the General Staff map on this endless plain, about 8 kilometers from us).
Portraits of the Karmapa and Buddhist saints are found on the windshield of a police jeep. Suddenly.
-Where are you going?
“To the lake,” Sashka answers successfully.
The path of our trek really lies through a beautiful round lake in a bowl between the hills.
- Ah! – they nod their heads understandingly and respectfully. - So you’re in Ayun! You won't make it today, and it's raining. Stay with us in Rome.
This is how we learn that there is a monastery on the lake, and an ancient kora path runs around it. We also learn that on Changtang, police officers do not have to be convinced atheists and unpleasant people.

Resident of Rome-tsun

It’s not for nothing that roads lead to Rome - this is the small nerve center of the local nomadic civilization. Here, in one (and only - for now) courtyard, adobe gyompa, police and administration coexist; people from distant nomads come to solve business and spiritual issues.

A lavish banquet.

The tables were waiting for us in the gyompa. The feast had nothing to do with religion or us: policemen, shepherds, and monks gathered together on the occasion of the arrival of respected fellow countrymen. Here one could observe an amazing mixture: dishes of nomadic cuisine were washed down with Chinese drinks, a Chinese from the administration and a learned lama were talking under old thangkas, the police carefully poured cha-sum into the mugs of the laowais (us, that is). Maybe this is it, the now fashionable “dialogue of cultures”, which never took place in another long-suffering Tibet?

The main holiday food on Changtang is meat, in all forms: boiled, dried, dried.

For the night we were assigned to one of the newly built concrete boxes, in three sad rows erected in Rome. It is not good for the center to consist of one courtyard. There is no rush to move into them yet. It was leaking from the roof, it smelled of dampness and lime, and the sound of falling drops echoed loudly. Will the people of Changtang want to exchange their fat herds and cozy tents for soulless concrete? Or maybe the houses were built for future settlers from the Lower World?

Our ascetic assistant from Rima really liked the design of the easel backpack.

(c) Natalia Belova
The expedition takes place within
project "Step to the Side".

"(3/2011).

The sky was darkening menacingly. Tsering ran after the yaks: he needed to drive the herd before the thunderstorm started. His wife Pema called us into the tent. It started to rain and the roof leaked. I had to drag old mattresses into a dry corner and scoop out water from the puddles on the floor with a ladle. When the rain subsided, everyone sat around the stove. They didn't take off their outerwear - it was too cold. We are visiting Tibetan nomadic shepherds. They live in Qinghai province, in highlands suitable only for pasture, and raise livestock. In Tibetan they are called "Drokpa" - people of the high mountain steppe.

Since the travels of Austrian Heinrich Harrer in the 1940s, Tibetan nomads seem to have become friendlier to foreigners. We constantly felt their hospitality and openness. This happened this time too. When everyone sat down around the stove, Pema began to take charge. She took out bowls and asked us to bring our own - in Tibet it is customary to eat from a personal plate. She poured toasted barley flour on each person, added a large piece of butter and a spoonful of dry yak cheese, and poured salted tea with milk over it all. The result was tsampa, the most common Tibetan food. You have to stir it with your hands. The Tibetans did this very smartly, and we awkwardly repeated after them: there is a lot of barley and tea in the bowl, almost to the brim, and the tea is hot - it burns our fingers.

Sitting by the warm stove and drinking tea with tsampa, Tsering talked about his family. From April to November they live in a tent, and spend the cold part of the year in a warm house in the village. They look after yaks and sheep. They grow nothing: barley, rice and fresh vegetables are bought from peasants in the village. If there is a cold winter (sometimes minus 40) and a lot of snow falls, some of the cattle die, and things will be hard. The family cannot imagine life without religion: they often go to a monastery, do not part with their rosary, constantly read mantras, wear amulets and images of saints around their necks, if someone gets sick, they run to the lama, not to the doctor.

Money is received only from the sale of meat, butter and dry cheese. Sometimes they do without money at all: they exchange their food for rice. Tsering's younger brothers, also shepherds, worked as road workers last year. Another potential way to earn money is to collect Chinese cordyceps. This mushroom is used in medicine and can be sold profitably.

Three other families live near Tsering and Pema, their tents not far from each other. There are many children at the camp: shaggy, unwashed, with snot under their noses, in dirty clothes, they are constantly spinning underfoot. Teenagers help their parents: pacify restless little yaks, cut meat, collect dung (dried dung).

The born child is not registered. The shepherds in this camp do not have an ID (analogous to our passport); they are content with a “hukou” - a registration document, one for the whole family. Children should be included in this document, but Tsering and Pema said this is not always the case. But if a child, when he grows up, wants to work in a city or town, his parents will have to get an ID for him.

Changes

You read Przhevalsky or Tsybikov and it seems that the life of nomads has not changed that much over the last century. But if you look closely, the changes are noticeable. When the weather lasts for several days, Pema and her daughters walk around the surrounding hills with baskets on their backs: collecting dung, which still serves as the main fuel. But if the dung in the stove does not ignite for a long time, Tsering brings a plastic canister and pours gasoline on it. In the evenings, the light is on in the tent: Tsering bought a portable solar battery. The horse was replaced by a motorcycle with 250 horsepower. It has a radio tape recorder that plays popular Tibetan and Western songs alternately. Pema and her daughters have been using sunscreen for several years.

Previously, the family always ate the same thing: rice, meat, butter, homemade yogurt, barley, barley cakes fried in oil, unleavened buns made from rice flour. And recently we have fallen in love with chips, vacuum-packed sausages (they store well without refrigeration even in hot weather) and instant noodles (they can be chewed dry). Sometimes they buy Coca-Cola and energy drinks. But the most favorite drink is still tea with milk, salt and butter; they drink almost twenty cups of it a day. They still ferment yogurt in a wooden bucket, use yak skin bags to store butter, dump dung in a huge pile in the corner of the tent, and wash it in water that makes their fingers freeze. Children play with pebbles, plants and balls of colorful yarn. But the thangka (Buddhist image) hanging on the wall is no longer hand-drawn, but printed on a printer.

Tsering's adult daughters braid each other's thin braids - there should be 108 of them (a sacred number in Tibetan Buddhism). Bright ribbons and threads up to a meter long are woven into black hair, and after securing the hairstyle, they decorate it with large stones the size of plums. Turquoise, amber and corals are held in high esteem; they are considered amulets. Previously, natural stones were always used, but now plastic ones are often used. They love beads and weave them into colorful beads and bracelets. Coins are very valuable, by the way, foreign or old Chinese coins; are considered a good gift. We gave Tsering some Indian coins and he was very happy. Coins are used to make jewelry, weave them into hair or tie them to clothes. At the same time, they wear modern clothes: sweaters, jackets and trousers from the Chinese market, and on their feet they wear simple canvas sneakers. But all women have a traditional chupa, a type of Tibetan coat.

“There are almost no real nomads left, who are their own masters and go where they want and when they want,” said Tsering. Many people built houses on winter pastures long ago. They no longer migrate more than twice a year. In addition, the authorities believe that the drokpa are to blame for the deterioration of pastures: there are too many yaks and the land does not have time to recover. There is less grass year by year, and more rodents. The soil is depleted, the steppes can no longer feed the growing population. Therefore, nomads are forced to use only certain pastures, which are fenced with barbed wire fences to prevent the yaks from grazing anywhere.

A year before moving

The other family, Phuntsoka and Jolkar, were worried. “There is talk that we are moving in 2011, but no one knows for sure whether this is true,” said Puntsok. The fact is that since the late 1990s, authorities began to resettle nomads in the Tibet Autonomous Region and in the Tibetan regions of Gansu, Qinghai and Sichuan from tents to permanent homes. This is done in order, firstly, to improve the lives of nomads and provide them with schools and hospitals. Secondly, to deal with the problem of overgrazing. Opponents of the idea say that Tibetans gathered in cities are easier to control and assimilate with the Han, the main people of China.

Shepherds move to small towns and villages. There are even specially built settlements for former nomads; there are a lot of them in Qinghai. The authorities are helping displaced people find a home, but in any case, people must adapt to new conditions. Previously, they lived only off livestock: there was milk, butter, meat, skins. In a new place you need to look for a source of income. Someone becomes a hired worker, someone, having sold their yaks, buys a car and works as a taxi driver, some open shops - in Tibet, as elsewhere in China, small businesses are developed. There are also those who still raise livestock on the plot next to their new home. It is believed that shepherds who have settled in a permanent place receive more opportunities for income and a comfortable life. But not everyone manages to find a job, and people have been sitting at home for years. It’s not for nothing that villages for former nomads were nicknamed “thieves’ schools.”

This is what Phuntsok and Dzholkar, and their neighbors in the camp, are afraid of - that they will not be able to settle in a new place, they will not cope with the difficulties. When the moving date is announced, the shepherds usually sell off the yaks. There are many people who want to get rid of livestock, so prices are low. There are people who deliberately spread rumors about imminent relocation in order to provoke a fall in prices. As a result, the shepherds do not receive enough money while they look for work. The Phuntsok and Jolkar family have two small children and an elderly grandfather who cannot walk and needs care. “I am afraid of what lies ahead,” Jolkar shares his fears. “Perhaps we will live better if Phuntsok finds a good job.” What if he remains idle? And how will we be received in the new place? In any case, I know: our lives will change dramatically.”

The life of Tibetan shepherds has changed more over the past ten years than in the entire previous century. On the one hand, it becomes more modern, simpler and more comfortable. More and more families can easily see a doctor, children go to school instead of herding yaks, adults ride motorcycles instead of horses, and the diet is not limited to tsampa, milk and meat. But gradually they lose their traditional culture, stop leading a nomadic lifestyle, and become sedentary. And this means that the nomads, who have been an integral part of Tibetan society for thousands of years, may soon disappear forever.