Browsing all posts in "Tibet".

Blizzard of Yaks

Yaks never cease to amaze me. The wind was wicked. The snow stinging. The yaks all acted like it was any other day, except to shake off the snow every now and then.

Filmmaker Choephel tells tale of Tibet

Ngawang Choephel was 2 when he and his mother fled Tibet, the place of his birth, after its occupation and control by the Chinese. The two traveled by yak across the Himalayas to India, where they lived in a Tibetan refugee camp in southern India.

Lowly owners exploit rare yaks

This is an interesting article. From what I can tell, Kufri is about 8200 ft. in altitude. Yaks in the United States tend to do well at much lower altitudes but there seems to be a temperature component as well. I have never heard of one dying from too low an altitude. Domestic yaks are [...]

Stock tank cleaning crew is given thumbs up by Yaks!

Our friends told us that goldfish would keep a stock tank sparkling clear all year…. They told us to get a dozen “feeder fish” and that we would have to replace several of them over the first few months as they acclimate to the tank. The original 12 are doing a great job and our [...]

Yak Cheese Helping Tibetan Nomads

Western China’s most abundant resource, the humble yak, are now helping Tibetan nomads.
Farmed in the region for centuries, the yak has been a traditional source of sustenance.
But now, Yaks are also providing luxury fibres and gourmet cheese to some of the world’s leading fashion houses and hotels.
They’re apart of social enterprises – businesses which aim to achieve social, environmental and financial goals.
Check out the link and the video.

Interview – Milking a Yak

An interesting video demonstrating the milking of a yak. Seems a bit of a roadside attraction but yurt is cool!

Punching Yaks and Sour Butter

They make the women tough round here.
I kid you not, we saw one punch a yak, full in the face.
I guess the yak wasn’t doing what it was told. And it didn’t seem to take too much notice of the punch either.
We got the impression it probably happened on a fairly regular basis.
The female yak-herder just clenched her fist and pow! She gave the animal one, right on its nose.

Yak Butter from Textures of Seoul

It was by chance that I tasted yak butter, and it was not because I became so comfortable as to walk up and milk one of the roaming lady yaks myself, closing my winnings into a glass jar and shaking it forever and a day. We had gone horseback riding–this was included in our tour package–and the horse herder who guided us invited us back to his ger for tea. We met his two young boys, whose heads were clean shaven like their daddy’s and who, at a stature half of my own, handled our horses like they were puppies, and his wife served us cow’s milk tea, home baked bread (because that is all there is so far from town) and yak butter.

Wounded Yaks

The symbolism of the wounded yak seems obvious, the artist is raising important questions about the fate of Tibet in the People’s Republic of China. Tibetan artists in Tibet have also been using the yak as a symbol of Tibet. Here are artworks by prominent Tibetan contemporary artists. High Peaks Pure Earth readers are invited to be art critics and to give their own interpretations:

“Rest of Everest” podcast “Yak-Tastic”

This is a terrific video from “The Rest of Everest” Podcast. It is fairly long but it rolls some beautiful Yak Footage!