In the morning Tsedup told me that I should have politely declined Namjher's offer of the platform to sleep on. All guests were treated as equals, but according to protocol, it had been wrong of me to sleep next to a monk. I felt embarrassed by my ignorance once again.
That day we had another seven houses to visit. At the first, there were so many children inside and they looked so alike that it was hard to tell whose they were. Tsedup and I talked about them with our host for some time, as they huddled together in the corner with wide eyes, eating their djomdi and whispering. It was amazing how much Tibetans talked about children. The word shyee, child, was mentioned frequently in conversation and it was clear that they loved their children deeply. They were also fiercely proud of their family heritage, and their children were important to them as they represented the immortality of the blood line. The children clustered eagerly outside as we photographed them, then an elderly relative called Gayko arrived to escort us. Like Azjung, he was a man of distinguished features. We walked over the hill and through the heather with a view of Amnye Kula. It looked different from this side of the valley, inaccessible and monolithic. It towered above us and I couldn't envisage that we had actually climbed it. As we walked, Tsedup told me that his family had lived here during the Cultural Revolution. He pointed to a hillock. It seemed innocuous enough.
'When I was a boy, I watched my father being made to stand there and hold a wooden post above his shoulders for a day,' he said. 'His arms were shaking uncontrollably, but they wouldn't let him put it down.'
As I stared at the spot I had a mental image of the scene, a glimpse of more brutal times. For Tsedup, the land was mapped with memories and ghosts and at times he would draw back the veil for me, so that I understood that it was not just a manifestation of physical beauty. There was much more to it than that.
Gayko led us patiently from family to family as we ate and I listened to them talk. At his own house, his two sons took turns with Tsedup to shoot a gun at a bottle perched on the mud wall outside. They whooped with delight when they struck it. Then we set off to the last house up the valley, which was probably the most interesting of all.
It was the home of two brothers, Karko and Cumchockchab, who shared one wife. As we sat in the shafts of sunlight on yak skins I watched, intrigued, as the family entertained us. Karko was an amiable old man, naked except for his sheepskin tsarer, a real nomad. He sat on the dried mud floor smoking his pipe and laughing. Tsedup informed me that he was considered a man of integrity and intelligence among the nomads. His brother Cumchockchab was the joker of the two. It had been he who had exclaimed at the wonders of western culture the night before. Their wife sat between them and made momos, which she placed in front of me on a wooden dish. She smiled and urged me to eat. 'Soul Sou!' She was unremarkable in appearance and looked incongruous in their mud hut. Her eyes were quite round and she was almost western-looking. I felt as if I might have bumped into her in the supermarket back home. Yet she had the pleasure of two men's company on those cold winter nights. It set me wondering about their sleeping arrangements. Was there some kind of rota system? Did she tire at all? Apparently polyandry was quite acceptable in these parts, although it was not widely practised. My astonishment was greeted later with mirth by Tsedup. who found my ignorance amusing.
After an exhausting but enjoyable tribal tour we left, armed with presents of cloth, kadaks and money, for it was a Tibetan custom not only to fill guests' stomachs but to send them away with a gift. We skidded home through the heather, aided by Gayko on his antiquated motorbike; he showed us how to pick a path across the river and down the valley.
We drove straight to Annay and Amnye's house near the town. They were leaving for Lhasa the next morning. As part of Amnye's work, they were to accompany a lama from Ganden Monastery and would stay on for a month in the city. They were both excited and more animated than I had ever seen them. This was their pilgrimage and they were to visit the great monasteries of their Tibetan heritage to pay homage to their gods. Tsedo and Gondo arrived soon after and we all chatted as Annay and Amnye packed their travel bags and warm clothes for the seven-day journey on the truck. Amnye had his bourgea, a fine Tibetan hat, fur-lined and silk-trimmed, and his traditional Tibetan boots, shangtee, which they urged me to try on. Everyone including Amnye, who was usually so serious, then fell about laughing at me, as they are rather comical in appearance, although functional and warm. Annay was ill with swollen glands. She could hardly speak, but would not let that curb her excitement and her stubborn will to complete the journey.
We went to bed early, and awoke at five the next morning to accompany them to the truck. It was dark and bitterly cold. Annay and I held hands and followed behind the men, slipping on the frosted ground, but she had forgotten her hat, which I ran back to collect from the house. Their neighbour, Annay Gee Gee, called to us to come through her gate as it was a short-cut. We walked through and caught sight of the vehicle that would take them on the seven-day journey. In the light cast from the window of the house in front, I was appalled by what I saw. The truck was piled high with boxes of butter so heavy that it had sunk on its axles. On top of this mountain of produce were about ten people, all trying to negotiate a place to sit. So precarious was their situation, that it would only have taken a sharp bend on an icy mountain road to send them flying out into the valley below.
This was the potential destiny of my dear parents-in-law, and I was filled with dread as they clambered up on top of the pile. I handed Annay her prayer scarf, placing it over her head as she boarded, and gave Rhanjer's monk son, Tinlee, who was accompanying them, another scarf for good luck. It was his first trip to his capital and I hoped he would get there. Suddenly, as the truck began to grind towards the road, Tsedup jumped up on top and pleaded with his father to take the bus instead. 'Drucker, drucker. It's no problem,' cried his father and Tsedup was forced to throw himself clear, as they disappeared into the dark. I whimpered quietly to myself as I watched the lights of the truck swing out of sight. Was this the last time I would see them? We walked back to the house and went to bed. Later we heard that the truck's wheel had broken on the Wild Yak range, not three miles from the house, and they had taken the bus after all. Relieved, we returned to the tents.
The next day the move was on. True nomadic spirit prevailed, but with no yaks this time. Technology had made life easier for the nomads and today a truck would do nicely instead. We got up early and began to take down the black tent. Sirmo unstitched the sides and we dismantled the enormous length of heavy fabric. Our hands were black, as it was covered in soot from the fire, and I was impressed to see how small a shape it could be folded into. Our home now sat on the grass, the size of a cardboard box. The day was chaotic: the truck got stuck in the mud and overturned when Tsedo was trying to tow Rhanjer's decrepit car so he had to fetch cable from the town to pull it out. We girls sat around among the sacks with the children and scrabbling puppies – the bitch had given birth to three – surrounded by mountains of ephemera, giggling and joking to pass the time. We waited till late afternoon around the lonely clay stove in the middle of the grassland, drinking tea and eating tsampa, the last of the tribe to go. There was no tent around us, just chilled autumn air and vast space. It had a surreal feel about it. Then Tsedo returned, cursing, in the truck and we heaved everything into the back. We were so overloaded that I was afraid the vehicle would keel over again, but we went on our way, a family on the move in the evening sunlight. We reached the house and unpacked, throwing the sacks on to the ground unceremoniously and, exhausted, piled into Annay Urgin's clay house next door for momos.