Day 169: Langmusi – Day 2
The bad weather lasted all night, and we woke up to a cloudy, mist morning. While Umatashi and Tchacy slept in until breakfast, we crawled out of the covers to help Lagay as soon as we noticed her heading out of the tent for her morning chores. One pair at a time, she released a calf who immediately ran to its mother to start suckling milk. She let the calf go at it for about 20sec, before pulling it away and tying it to a stake on the ground – this is how she gets the mother yak’s milk flowing so she can milk her. After she has finished getting the human’s share, she released the calf to finish its breakfast. She repeated this process over the next hour, milking about 25 yaks. We motioned to Lagay, asking if we can try it out, and she happily nods and shows us how to yank the yak’s teat to release the milk. We only managed to get a weak stream of milk to come out – we didn’t want to hold up Lagay’s morning with our slowness, so once we quickly move on to let her finish. Instead, we help out with the only task we can’t possibly screw up: shoveling shit.
Yak dung is the nomad’s main source of fuel for heat and cooking. Every day, Lagay shovels the shit from the yak’s nighttime pen and scatters it flat on the hillside – it takes 4 days for the dung to dry (provided it doesn’t rain). We asked our hosts how long the giant pile in the tent would last – they told us it was enough dung for 5 days. By the time Lagay was ready to start breakfast, our shoes were caked with poo and we had smears on the bottoms of our pants and our hands. We used up about half of our hand-sani trying to get our hands clean enough to eat.
Our hostess, Lagay, is up with the dawn to milk the yaks
Igor and Lindsay take turns shovelling yak shit. Yup, we *paid* to do this!
Lindsay and Igor take turns milking a yak – we both manage to get a small stream of milk going, but quickly let Lagay finish as she is much faster and we don’t want to hold up her other chores for the day
Ater breakfast, Tchacy got a call from Liyi regarding our itinerary for the day – he passed us the phone, “You are supposed to climb the mountain today, but it is covered in fog. Your guide can take you to the gorge instead – there is no fog there.” We had no preference for our destination for the day – just as long as we got to go out on horseback, so we told Liyi the gorge would be fine. Once Lagay had packed up our lunch, we helped Tchacy saddle the horses. It was still lightly raining, so he gave us some ponchos to keep us dry during our ride.
As we were preparing to set off, our hosts’ dog, Tyet, quietly walked over to Igor and started sniffing his pants. Apparently he no longer considered us dangerous intruders, now that we spent the night and helped his mistress shovel poo. Igor waited patiently for Tyet to get comfortable before trying to pet him. Once Tyet licked Igor ‘s hand we knew we had the all clear, and we started showering the dog with affection. When we took off for the gorge, Tyet decided he wanted to join the party, and followed us for the rest of the day.
Riding off in the rain, wearing thick waterproof ponchos. With the dramatic mountain scenery we feel like character from “The Lord of the Rings” – Aragorn and his wandering Rangers!
At the mouth of the gorge, Tchacy dismounted and invited us to climb up the hillsides to check out the view (I guess he really wanted to make sure we got to hike!). We could see tons of streamers of prayer flags flapping at the top of the hill, adorning some kind of stumpa, so we climbed up to check it out. Once we were finished, we joing Tchacy (and Tyet!) for a picnic lunch of fried potatos and bread.
Hiking to the top of the hill at the mouth of the gorge, where thousands of prayer flags flap in the wind
Prayer flags on the hill above the valley
Igor takes a break with Lindsay, before climbing to the peak of the next hill
View of the valley
Pretty flowers and a flowing stream back in the gorge
Igor cements his friendship with Tyet by feeding him our leftover lunch
Riding back through the gorge
The rain has stopped for our return ride, allow us to ditch the ponchos
A tired dog is a good dog! Igor does everything in his power to wear out Tyet to prevent him from barking all night
Once we returned to the tent in the afternoon, we had a lot of down time. We went outside to play with Tyet when we got a bit of sun, otherwise we hung out inside and drank lots of hot tea. That night, we “helped” Lagay herd the yaks again, then entertained Tchacy and our hosts with Igor’s “magic trick”. After dinner, Tchacy started a game of “Pairs”, which was easy enough to figure out the rules without speaking the same language. By the time we rolled out the sleeping bags again, we were so tired, we stode a good chance of actually sleeping!
When we see a beam of light peak through the tent, we rush outside to enjoy the sunshine. It’s brief, but we get a few shots as we play with Tyet
While Umatashi gets home before sunset, he doesn’t even help Lagay herd the yaks today! We join Lagay and she attempts to teach us how to use the “pe” (a Tibetan slingshot) to spook the yaks into running in the right direction. After Lindsay nearly throws a rock at her head, she wiesly gives up. We’ll stick to shovelling poop.
Yak meat, vegetables and rice for dinner – YUM! Afterwards, Igor shofs off his Indonesian “Jungle Magic” trick and Tchacy teaches everyone to play “Pairs”