A New Year celebration on the plateau showcases modern Tibetan herding culture
“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.
Yak of All Trades: Tibetan New Year with Herders on the Plateau is a story from our issue, “Sports for All.” To read the entire issue, become a subscriber and receive the full magazine.
Mads Vesterager Nielsen is a burgeoning explorer who rides his trusty motorbike, nicknamed “The Little Black Yak,” to far-flung corners of the People’s Republic. He is a staunch believer in the spirit of adventure, even in a modern and demystified world. Rather than clinging to old notions of glorious exploration, his background in the social sciences has led him to believe that “authenticity” is a messy mixture of ingredients such as culture, society, history, technology, and mythology as it exists today.
