Picture of Tibetan nomad woman with furry hat (Qinghai, China)

Tibetan nomad woman in the plains of Qinghai province

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Huge areas in Qinghai appear empty, but when you look closer, you can see and meet Tibetan nomads, living in black yak-hair tents.
It was quite cold outside, and we were invited in and were asked to sit down in this family tent where we met several children, two monks and a woman and man. As if it were the most normal thing in the world, the woman prepared us tea, and then gave us big chunks of dried yak meat and some fried bread. The yak meat was chewy but a welcome snack, and the hosts never stopped topping up my tea cup and giving me always more meat. The roof of the tent had an opening through which not only daylight came in, but also snow flakes; it also served as an outlet for the centrally placed stove. The woman regularly added yak dung to the stove, which obviously also served for preparing food. I touched the tent and found the yak hair to be very strong and much harder than I had imagined. In one corner of the tent, there was an altar with butter lamps, prayer flags, and many pictures of the Dalai Lama. After a while, the monks started a ceremony, humming texts from their religious scriptures and beating a colourful flat drum. I certainly had never expected to find this service in a remote Tibetan nomad tent. When we felt our time was up, we thanked the nomads for their great hospitality, took out some presents to leave behind, and moved on with a very good memory in our minds.
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