Tsedup covered his face and walked away quickly, guided by Azjung, who saw us to the outer door. As I mounted the bike, the Sky Man gently took my face in his hands and pressed his forehead to mine. Then his cheek to mine. It was the closest thing to a kiss I could imagine. A gesture so spontaneous and pure, with no regard for nomad etiquette, that I would never forget it. 'It is so sad that you have to leave,' he said, over and over.

Tsedup and I said nothing to each other all the way back to the house.

The next morning we woke at dawn and moved quietly about our business. The car would be arriving soon to take us away. Although the house was crowded, everyone moved silently around each other in their long costumes, like a slow, sad dance of swishing skirts. Tsedup and I were dressed for the journey. His family had made him a wine-coloured, woollen tsarer with gold brocade. Amnye had bought the cloth in Lhasa. A huge knife dangled from his waistband in an elaborate silver holster. I had been given a green silk tsarer, with red and gold trim and a soft lambswool collar. The women tucked and tied the folds of fabric until they were satisfied and smiled at their work. Then I was presented with amber jewellery, which had been handed down through the generations. Annay Urgin strung them on to my necklace, then stood back to look at her finished work. 'Amdo Namma.' She smiled. It was like a ceremony and we were as resplendent as a bride and groom. I felt proud to be returning to my culture in traditional Tibetan costume. It felt normal. It was who I had become. I was going back to a grey place, but thanks to Tsedup, I had been blessed with a new knowledge. This was my beginning in a coloured world.

As I stepped out of the house Annay took my arm. We embraced and wept gently. 'Look after each other,' she said to me. Then she went to find her son. I stood alone on the step and took one last look at my new home. The sun had left a delicate thumbprint in the pink morning mist. The milky cloud drifted low over the river basin and the blue mountains smudged the horizon. The first silver slivers of light winked from the town. Out in our field, I heard the clink of the white stallion's bridle and the muffled voices of the farewell party, their leopardskin collars pulled tight against the frost. I breathed in the fresh fragrance of the yarsa weeds, tumbling over the stone wall. It reminded me of the autumn harvest when we had lain laughing in the bales of crisp straw. I picked some and put it in my bag.

Then I walked to the waiting car. All of the family crowded round and many of our friends had come from the town to say goodbye. I moved among the earnest faces; the same faces that had seemed so strange to me when they had greeted us so long ago. Today I knew them all. I was their namma. They were my heart. 'Come back soon,' they cried, as we climbed into the car. As we pulled away, I watched them waving and receding in the back window.

Don't cry, I told myself. You will see them when the flowers blossom.

Epilogue

Everyone stared at us on the plane. We must have looked ridiculous to the other passengers, as we sat in our lavish costumes, but I didn't care. They were from the grey world. I looked out of the window at the land beneath the cloud and remembered the family running out of the tent to watch a passing plane. Planes hardly ever flew over the Tibetan plateau, so it was always an exciting event. 'One day you'll be inside and you'll look down at us and wave,' they had said. But, needless to say, they were not on our flight path.

Back in London I wore my tsarer for a week. Then I felt too bizarre and conscious of the strange looks in the street, so I put it away in favour of that season's fashions. It hung in the wardrobe, waiting, the leopardskin trim a reminder each morning when I selected my office clothes. The soft aroma of dung smoke still clung to the fibres when I nuzzled into them. It took a week to wash the dirt of the grassland from under my fingernails and even longer for the cracked skin on my hands to return to normal. For a while I sleepwalked around the city in a state of shock. It was strange to be surrounded by so many white faces. I went to a party and watched dancers flailing their limbs to a deafening rhythm. I was calm inside, the slow beat of my heart like a slip of the hawk's wing trembling on a thermal in the Valley of the Rocks.

But it was good to see my family and our friends again. To gossip and drink and be understood. We confined ourselves only to those who understood. For there were plenty of people who couldn't comprehend the kind of life we had led. The trip had brought Tsedup and me closer together than we had ever been. Now when he talked of the land and his people, I understood his passion and was able to share it with him. It had always been hard to live with him, knowing he would rather be somewhere else. Now I wanted to be somewhere else as well. But I hadn't forgotten that, not so long ago, he had extolled the virtues of western society to his friends in Tibet. It was true that the grass was always greener elsewhere.

In the spring I became pregnant. I will never forget the day I found out. I was sitting in the kitchen enjoying the warm breeze that trailed in from the back door. I had unloaded the shopping: fresh prawns, soft mangoes. I had been walking my brother's dog in the park, watching children playing in the sandpit. Then I had decided to do a test. I had a strange feeling inside. When the line went blue, I went pink. I looked at myself in the mirror, clutching my cheeks. Did I look any different? I had a life inside me. I paced up and down, talking to myself, laughing. I went to the back door, to the sunlit garden, where the voices of next-door's children trilled over the fence. I cried. Then, when Tsedup came home from work, I followed him along the hallway asking him how his day had been. He was half-way through a short soliloquy about infuriating customers in his shop, when I began giggling. I tried to cover my mouth, but was out of control with irrepressible excitement. He knew. His eyes twinkled in anticipation of my next few words. He went white then he smiled.

Both our families were overjoyed. When we phoned to tell Tsedup's parents, we learnt that Sirmo was pregnant too. I was thrilled to know that our child would have a cousin the same age and I couldn't wait to see Sirmo. A hospital scan revealed that I carried a son, and in the summer we took him for his first trip to Tibet. He was five months old in the womb. When we arrived the whole family ran out of the tent to greet us. I was euphoric as I went inside. Everything was just as it always had been, but the tent seemed bigger somehow. Shermo Donker smiled warmly at me. She was more beautiful than I had remembered. Tsedo looked wilder, with long, tangled hair and a beard. I hardly recognised him. After the first few tentative moments, everyone fell back into the old familiar humour, joking and laughing together. The children jumped all over me again, although they were told to be more careful this time. Dickir Ziggy was at school now and came back to see us one weekend, boasting to her brother and sister of her accomplishments. Dickir Che and Sanjay examined the contents of her satchel methodically and fought over the coloured pencils. It felt good to be home. Somehow the grassland looked different, strangely autumnal for this time of year. There were fewer flowers and it was not as lush as I remembered it last summer. The stream had cleaved a new path in the bank and a small waterfall gushed close to the tent. We lay and listened to it each night, inside the new tent that Amnye had made for us.