The Sky Man spoke to Tsedup in a low voice while bent double over the prayer beads that he fingered slowly and methodically in his big hand. His sunken cheeks filled and puffed out the words in a throaty resonance. He had a presence, as if time itself had settled around him like a cloak. Azjung was not only a man with a good memory, he was living history. He listened carefully to his young relative and gave ponderous, methodical answers, smiling benignly. He wanted to hear about the West and Tsedup told him. Occasionally he laughed huskily at something ironic or surprising, relishing this new knowledge and storing it for future reference. New stories from a new world.

As they sat talking by the fire, which belched out a small cloud of smoke now and again, I felt humbled by the spirit of this old couple. They had enormous dignity, and it struck me that, because of the importance of oral tradition here, they had attained the respect they so rightly deserved. It was clear that the more old people talked, the more others listened. Their wisdom could directly affect the morality of a society and they were therefore placed at the top of the hierarchy and were profoundly revered. I had always felt that there was so much more I could have learnt from my own grandmother. I had tried to suck up her words as we sipped tea from china cups, the clock ticking on the sideboard, the dog snoring in the chair. She was my history. But, in the West, the war stories of a pensioner are often discarded as of little consequence. The young audience are too busy to listen, too bored by the past. In a fast-moving world there is no time for stories, no fire to tell them around. And the spark of imagination died with TV.

Tsedup listened respectfully to the old man, laughing with him, debating, learning. Sometimes they fell into quiet, intimate discussion, and I could hear the steady chink of the prayer beads and the squeak of Ama-lo-lun's prayer wheel as it spun in her bony grip. She smiled at me with such warmth that I was reminded of my own grandmother. They shared the same strength of character honed from years of experience, both diminutive but powerful women, their bodies decrepit but their minds alive with wisdom, defiance and raw energy. My grandmother had loved Tsedup because she sensed his respect for her. When she died, he telephoned his family to tell them. They asked for her name. He told them Lily. I could hear them pronouncing it tentatively down the receiver. Then Ama-lo-lun and Tsedup's mother came to this monastery and asked the monks to pray for her spirit on its journey to the next life. One hundred butter lamps were lit for her here on this hillside. A life that had begun in 1910 in the depths of suburban London, had ended with a tribute by Tibetan nomads on the Roof of the World. It was memories such as these that made the polarity of our cultures and their fusion seem even more remarkable.

Before we left, Azjung took a small felt holdall from inside the musty cupboard. Tied carefully inside it was a small polished bowl made from a light substance. He said he didn't know whether it was wood or fungus. It had been in his family for four generations and his ancestor had paid for it with a yak. It was obviously of value. A Tibetan's prize possession, along with the obligatory knife and tinder box, is their own bowl, so it was a great honour when he pushed it into Tsedup's hand and told him to keep it.

We closed the wooden door behind us and heard the familiar tinkle of the bell. Time had stopped in the dark dust of that hut. I could still hear the voice of the Sky Man and it was no longer a simple resonance, a vibration on the dirt floor and soot walls, but the echo of a thousand forefathers in my ears.

Seven. A Woman's Work

It wasn't an echo, but a snorting and snuffling that woke me the next day. A yak was licking the side of the tent, its tongue rasping against the coarse canvas. I beat the moist imprint of its muzzle with the back of my hand shouting, 'Sshtoo!' as I had been taught and it thundered away with a snap of the guy rope that continued to vibrate in a dizzying drone. I lay for a few moments, feeling the warmth of our bodies, watching my spiralling breath. Then, pulling my sheepskin tsarer loosely around me, I stood up on the damp grass and shucked on my shoes. It was six a.m. and nature was calling.

Outside was silent, apart from the odd sheep bleat and yak grunt. I crouched, shivering, in the frosted grass by the stream's bank and watched dawn laying down her palette of rose, peach and gold, the low cloud suspended over the Yellow river. It was a rare moment: there was no one but myself and the animals in sight. Behind me our flock of sheep lay sleeping in a large orderly circle on the grass. They were nothing like the sheep I was used to, more like goats, lithe and leggy for scaling the mountain slopes in winter, with thin snouts and long, twisted horns. Their summer fleece was dense and thick shanks of winter wool hung from their sides. Even their bleating was different, a comical refrain, like a man pretending to be a sheep, we decided. Beyond them, the yaks and their calves lay drowsily pegged to the ground in rows, shifting in their churned-up mud-bed. They were hardy beasts, incapable of surviving at low altitude, but perfectly equipped for life on the plateau and its harsh environment. But I knew nothing of that harshness: I had tasted only the balmy summer of stark light, cold nights and sharp morning frosts. The odd day had found us huddled round the fire in the tent as the rain lashed wildly and dripped through the sooty fabric, but I had not yet felt the thrust of a chest-thumping gale. That was to come.

I stood staring up at the platinum moon, heavy and perfect-round, like a medallion in the deep azure pool of the western sky. When I looked down again Shermo Donker was standing by the black tent. She didn't call to me, just smiled. However, she had little time to pause and admire as it was time for the first milking, and she bustled off towards the yaks in the laboured gait characteristic of nomad women, her gumboots scuffing through the wet grass. Rather guiltily, I bustled back to my bed, confident that I would be with her for the lunch-time milking. It wasn't as if anything was expected of me and the other women showed no resentment towards me for being different. In fact I was thoroughly spoilt, but I was keen to show willing. At a reasonable hour, of course.

But as I lay listening to her shouting to the children to get up, I felt a gulf between us. What was it like to belong to a place like this, as she did? It was impossible for me to know. I was too different and had seen too much of the world. Her vision and mine seemed irreconcilable and I tried to imagine what it would be like to share hers. She had been born into this tribe. Sometimes women or men married into other tribes, like Tsedup's brother Gondo and sister Dombie, but through marriage to Tsedo she had secured her future here. She had only left Machu to go to Labrang a few times, and as a child had joined her family on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, but apart from that she had never left this place. Generally nomad women do not leave the tribe much, as they are so busy with their chores. I wondered how it felt to live a life that, to me, seemed so predictable, in a place where you knew everybody. You knew your place. In some ways I was envious of her. The security and communality of this life was a far cry from the mutual isolation of the equally routine rat-race back home in London: the slow shuffling of aliens in an underground tunnel on the way to an office full of gossip, shrill laughter and telephones. It was a world away now.

I felt as if I was standing on the outside looking in. It wasn't just the way I looked that set me apart, it was the knowledge that they had grown and lived together all their lives. What was it like to be part of a tribe of people that you have known all your life? I supposed it might be claustrophobic, but they didn't think like that. For them the tribe meant comfort, safety, identity and stability. The more I thought about it, the more attractive it sounded. I resolved to try to bridge the gap between us by attempting to help more with the workload, before snuggling down again beneath the sheepskin.