That week I saw my first kill. I had woken early and, after struggling to dress in my tsarer, which required inordinate patience for one so inexperienced, emerged from our tent into the morning mist. The scene outside was new. While we were in Labrang the tribe had moved to their summer location and I was sorry to have missed that most nomadic experience: the dismantling of the tent; the slow procession of yak and sheep herds down the valley to fresh grass. But there would be another move with the onset of winter and I would not miss that.
The tents were now spread out in a circle in the vast Yellow river valley on the flat grassland. They were bordered by the rocky mountains of their spring and winter site to the north and the green-blue mountains of Ngoo Ra, the Silver Horn range, to the south. Eastwards and westwards the valley extended to the horizon and on for ever into a horizon that was blank apart from one other encampment, visible a few miles to the west. Our new home was more exposed than it had been at the former site. Fresh winds swept the corridor from west to east on good days, and from the east, bringing chilled air and rain, on bad.
Beyond the main tent two horsemen were skulking through a sheep herd. Tsedo and Gorbo were barefoot and wrapped in tsarers, their breath clouding upward with the warm air from the horses' snorting nostrils. They carried lassoes casually at their sides and ambled with deceptive nonchalance among the ignorant sheep. At a glance, I knew their intent. The animals shifted lazily in a dumb crowd from left to right, then scuffled, bleating, and parted ranks as a rope arced overhead and swung wasted between them. One stood stunned for a moment, unsure which way to turn, then the two horses closed in and it bolted, isolated, as they cantered after it past our tent and towards the stream. Deranged with fear it crashed down the bank into the water, pursued by Gorbo, who lassoed it around one horn, dismounted his horse and wrestled it out of the water to open ground. I felt an overwhelming sadness as I watched the animal struggling and whispered, ' Ommani padme hum,' They hadn't noticed me – killing was a man's domain and it was forbidden for Tibetan women to slaughter livestock. Although they helped in the preparation of the meat, they were not permitted even to watch the death. Still, I felt a morbid curiosity and wanted to witness it. I had never seen an animal killed before and somehow felt that I should. I took advantage of my sheltered position next to the white tent and spied. Tsedo was shouting at his younger brother, and it seemed as if things hadn't gone to plan. From what I could gather this was Gorbo's first catch and Tsedo was chiding him for leading the sheep to the water, causing it undue stress. He dismounted, straddled the animal's neck and dragged it nearer the family tent. There, he bound the sheep's muzzle with the rope, smothered its nostrils with his hands and held on tight as the animal bucked and writhed, gagging and retching, for what seemed an eternity, until at last it resigned itself and, with one final shiver, relaxed in his grip and fell limp. Gorbo stood over them spinning the korlo, and praying as Tsedo began skinning.
I slipped back inside the tent, feeling like a voyeur, but there was so much to learn and I was tired of being a hypocrite. I had only ever known pretty packaged food that bore no resemblance to the animal it had come from. Choice cuts, Cellophane wrapping, best-before dates in a clinical setting. When Tsedup first went into a supermarket in England he remarked that, once you had bypassed the fresh-bread odour pumping from the entrance vents, the food did not smell. He preferred to seek out markets, where buying food was a sensory experience. He could imagine eating it. Here, however devastating the experience, I could understand where my food had come from. I could take responsibility for eating it and give thanks for the animal's spirit, for killing is a necessity of life in Tibet. Meat forms the main component of the nomads' diet, but their Buddhist faith means that they hold a deep respect for all living things and regret their brutal task.
As I hid, Amnye appeared from the family tent and came to a small mound on the grass not five yards from me. He knelt over it and poured on to it smouldering ashes he had collected from the hearth in the tent. He held a cloth sack containing tsampa and a gold cup. I watched as he simultaneously sprinkled the tsampa and water from the cup on to the mound, which smoked in soft grey clouds, while chanting in a rhythmic murmur. He didn't look up and I stood peering patiently through the crack in the tent until he had finished. It was his daily practice to make offerings to the deities, as did the head of each family in the tribe. They were not prayers he uttered but a constant stream of mesmeric monologue: he was addressing the family deities, asking for protection for his family, the land, his animals. I waited quietly as the smoke merged with the mist, watching Shermo Donker and Sirmo finishing milking the last row of yaks and the children scurrying back and forth from the tent with wooden pails of milk.
I was soon to discover the true value of the nomads' ancient rituals, for it was the fifteenth day of the sixth month in the lunar calendar and an auspicious day. Today the men would abandon the grassland to make their annual offering to the holy mountain, Amnye Kula. They would join the rest of the tribes in the Lhardey Nyima, Sun Valley, area of Machu, on the north side of the Yellow river. I was to stay behind with the other women.
I woke Tsedup and told him about the kill I had just witnessed and he repeated the prayer ' Om mani padme hum.' I asked him if he had ever killed a sheep and he said no, but as a child he had helped his father skin three hundred after an epidemic that destroyed their herd. The shock of my experience waned as the realisation of the true hardships of life here reached a new clarity. Suddenly there was so much I didn't know about the closest person to me in my life. More and more I was to realise that he had seen suffering in a way I could never before have understood. I kissed him, then went to wash in the stream.
Inside, the main tent was a bloody commotion of slicing and mashing. Tsedo and several other men from the tribe were busy butchering the freshly killed sheep for the trip. I was ushered to my usual honorary position close to the fire and picked my way carefully past the splayed carcass on the floor, taking care not to step over anyone. To do so is considered bad manners in nomad society and would be to show disrespect for the person, animal, food or book that had been straddled. I had made that mistake many years ago in India when I had been playing with Tsedup's friend's baby and had jumped over her. Tsedup had been quick to berate me and I had been hurt by his vehemence. I had not intended to offend but had been ignorant of the social code. I never did it again. It is also polite to pass behind someone, not in front, but this morning, with such limited space, that rule was waived and I sidled through the mass of bodies.
Annay prepared tea and bread for me, while Shermo Donker stirred the boiling pot of meat, bone and the head of the poor sheep, as it bobbed, black-eyed, to the surface. The men were all sitting cross-legged on the ground, their arms stained red, chopping the meat and offal into mince and stuffing the intestines to make long sausages. They muttered prayers for the spirit of the dead animal as they worked and Annay spun the prayer wheel, chanting, 'Om mani padme hum,' over and over, as the steam from the pot coiled up through the shaft in the tent roof. It is forbidden to fry meat as the smoke generated would pass into the sky and offend the mountain spirits so all meat is boiled.
I watched as the fat and blood were mixed with tsampa and a little meat in a huge cauldron. They cut the stomach lining into wide strips then proceeded to make a rich black pudding, spooning the mix on to the textured lining, rolling it up and sewing it together down its length with thick thread. These were then boiled too. The smell of the meat and blood and the thick odour from the floating tallow on the bubbling water filled my nostrils.
When the animal had been cooked, they hung the skin outside on the tent lines to dry and some strips of meat from the roof of the tent to smoke, a nomad delicacy. Then they ate a little while Shermo Donker prepared a saddle-bag full of tsampa, butter, fried barley, rice, jo – wheat husks – tea, milk and different pieces of fabric. These would be the offerings, gifts from the family to the holy mountain, representing their livelihood.
The rest of the male contingent from the tribe then arrived at our tent on horseback. Gurdo carried a ndashung, a wooden spear about six metres high, with a brightly painted flight. He looked like a medieval knight with his lance. The small boys chattered excitedly in the saddle, thrilled to be accompanying their fathers and grandfathers. Tsedup, Amnye, Tsedo, Gorbo and the rest of the men who had been helping with the sheep mounted their horses, and Annay, Shermo Donker, Sirmo and I watched with the children as they made off across the grassland in a procession. The spear protruded from the throng as they disappeared over the brow of the hill into the low cloud.
There had been no room for an embrace, not here. From what I had seen, men and women didn't display affection publicly. I made do with a lingering glance from Tsedup as he pulled his tsarer across his face and turned in the saddle. Without a doubt he fitted in. Despite his years away his face that morning was the face of a nomad, like his brothers': wind-whipped and wild-eyed.
This was to be my first time alone in the family. Annay took my hand and led me back into the tent, chattering soothingly, using phrases she knew I would understand. I had not learnt much Amdo from Tsedup in our time together. Since his English was fluent, there had been little occasion to enter into extensive dialogue with him and he was a reluctant teacher. I knew a few basic words and these would have to do until I mastered the language. So far in Amdo, I had relied on Tsedup to translate for me. Now I was on my own. Annay sensed my discomfort at my inability to communicate effectively and did everything in her power to bridge the language divide. When she offered me tea she took an imaginary bowl in her hand and slurped enthusiastically from it. 'Namma, ja'n tong!' she implored with wide eyes, then laughed like a girl when I understood. She urged me to eat, made sure I was comfortable and pampered me. It would be easier than I thought to let Tsedup go and simply enjoy the women's company. To my surprise, once away from their menfolk they were chatty and bawdy. Where before they had remained demure and restrained, they now cackled like banshees and slapped their thighs as they went about their tasks in a more leisurely manner. Shermo Donker and Sirmo drew me into their confidence and teased me. 'Shermo, do you miss your husband?' they giggled.
'No, I don't!' I exclaimed, and we all fell about laughing.
On the second day I was feeling more independent. I had spent the night in our white tent with Dickir Che, the oldest of Shermo Donker and Tsedo's girls. She had chattered animatedly to me as we lay drowsily in the dark and sang at the top of her voice when she woke. Unlike some of the young girls, whose voices rang out in a resounding tremolo, Dickir Che shouted her Amdo song like a military drill. It was a rude awakening, but she was happy and I was loath to silence her. She began the day by examining every item in my wash-bag, including a tampon, which I told her was for putting in your ears if they hurt. I immediately regretted telling her this. It would be just like her to catch an ear infection. Worse, she might recommend them to my father-in-law. Visions of Amnye walking round with strings dangling from his ears entertained me for a while.
It was becoming clear to me that privacy was a scarce commodity in the grassland. Usually my first lavatorial exercise of the day was most prized, since it was the only time when I could be alone in the riverbed. At all other times in the day I was accompanied by at least three other children, who had been instructed to follow me in case I got eaten by the dogs. But I was becoming more confident and was not afraid of them. Actually the children only wanted to get a glimpse of my white behind, but I knew their game and used my tsarer cleverly as a mini-tent, hoisted round my hips to avoid their eyes. The family were fascinated by my white skin and found it inconceivable that their own brown-nut colour was attractive. They laughed incredulously when I told them that people back home covered themselves in oil and lay virtually naked under the sun in order to look like them.
There was certainly no escaping Dickir Che that morning. She thoroughly inspected the contents of my rucksack and told me my clothes were too dull. 'You should wear pink, like Mother,' she instructed. Then she followed me to the riverbed, carrying my soap and towel like a diligent maidservant and watched me studiously as I washed, copying every action and laughing at me. The nomads thought my method of splashing water on my face strange – they scrubbed theirs with a soapy towel, a Chinese habit. But when Dickir Ziggy, Dickir Che's younger sister, and Sanjay, her tiny brother, came running from the black tent to join us she narrowed her eyes to angry slits and scolded with such ferocity that I was taken aback. When they tried to join in she shouted at them to leave us alone. She seemed to have adopted me and was not going to share me easily. I urged them all to cease their argument and we all made our way to the tent, in a babble of competitive chatter, 'Ajay Shermo, Ajay Shermo… Aunty, Aunty…', a girl clinging to each of my hands and Sanjay clutching my skirt.
That day I lay in the sun with Annay under the raised edge of the tent flap and spoke to her, as best I could, about what it had been like for Tsedup in England without his family. There was a lot of elaborate gesticulation but we managed. She told me that she had been very ill while he was away and that she had cried on most days for her son, not knowing what had happened to him. The worry had affected her health: her eyesight had deteriorated and she frequently complained of aches and pains. As I looked at her wizened face, watery green eyes tugged down at the corners and her wiry grey hair, I knew that his absence had aged her. I told her that Tsedup had always talked of them all, so much so that I felt as if I knew them without having met them. I had witnessed his suffering for years and now I was hearing what before I could only imagine she had felt.
Annay told me that now that she had met me and my parents she was happy for her son to return to his life in England, when it was time to go. I was touched by her ability to confide in me, immediately struck by the knowledge that, despite our cultural differences and my pathetic language skills, we had developed a bond. I was family. I was her namma.
On the third day the men returned from the holy mountain. At the sound of approaching horse hoofs we ran out of the tent to greet them, and Tsedup, his father and two brothers dismounted outside. The rest of the men in the tribe dispersed to their own family tents where the hues of their wives' bright shirts signalled each welcoming party. It was good to see Tsedup again. He had lost the slate shade that the English climate had given his skin and it shone like mahogany. His hair hung blue-black and tousled around his shoulders as he stood before me in his tsarer, grinning broadly at me. ‘I missed you,' he said. It was the only indication that he was not entirely the nomad he resembled. I was glad that our intimacy had not suffered in the face of normal macho behaviour – his brother, Tsedo, walked past Shermo Donker without so much as looking at her. In fact, our words were now like a special secret since no one could understand what we said.
When we were all settled inside, Tsedup produced the video camera he had taken with him and we all settled around its tiny screen to watch the film of their trip. Everyone was fascinated by the camera, but the women were particularly keen to watch; they had never been present at the ceremony that had taken place and clustered around the machine excitedly, awaiting their turn. The men, of course, saw it first.
The screen revealed their journey in miniature. First came the procession of hundreds of men on horseback to the offering site from their base-camp of white tents. They moved silently and ceremoniously through the summer flowers of the valley and alongside a rushing stream, the horses snorting, their bridles clinking in the sunshine. There were small boys, old men and young, some with hats on to protect them from the glare, some with rifles strapped to their backs. Many carried the ndashung with darchok, prayer flags, tied to the end, balancing the enormous lance across their laps or standing it upright in the saddle so that it pointed skyward. They formed an orderly line that snaked up the side of the mountain to the ridge of the offering site where the shogshung stood. The shogshung, or staff of life, marked the site of the mountain worship. It was the most important symbol of the mountain deities and its base had been buried in the ground along with hdir, treasure, sacred offerings to the earth contained in colourful cloth bags, which, at the time of their burial, were placed with extreme care in exactly the right position so as not to offend the gods. Against the main staff leant many ndashung, forming a tepee-like shape of spears, festooned with hundreds of prayer flags from years of offerings, tired and grey with exposure to the elements, flapping in the wind. Along the ridge stood another ten spears placed at intervals of about five paces, again covered in prayer flags. The men assembled beneath the shogshung and placed their own offerings of prayer flags in a pile on the ground before three monks. They sat quietly as the monks consecrated the offerings, purifying them before they could be displayed before the gods. The tip of the shogshung glinted in the sunlight and nothing but their rhythmic chanting and the wind could be heard. It was the calm before the storm.
Suddenly, the crowd erupted into a riot of whooping and shrieking. Gunshots split the air and a blizzard of white snow clouded the blue sky as they tossed thousands of wind horses into the valley in fistfuls. They called the mountain's name, 'Amnye Kula! Amnye Kula!' over and over, and shouted their own messages to the gods, personal appeals for protection from the mountain spirits against their enemies. Gondo cried, 'Har jalo! Har jalo! Har jalo! May the spirit win!' as he cast his own paper to the wind. The chief, Tsenach, bellowed his own guttural eulogy, an enormous silver hoop swinging from his ear. Above the cacophony the deep resonance of the conch boomed out, as a monk blew into the shell and brass bells tinkled. They heaped the offerings of tsampa, rice, cloth, butter and milk that they had brought on to a huge bonfire beneath the shogshung and erected the new ndashung, stringing the prayer flags from spear to spear along the ridge and ropes tufted with merdach, spun sheep's wool, and kacher, long sheep's hair. Each man circumambulated the ridge three times on his horse and the ritual was complete. The ground was littered with thousands of wind horses and still they spiralled densely in the smoke from the fire. It was like a war.
As I watched, I could imagine it happening hundreds of years ago. The timelessness of the scene was disturbed only by a T-shirt or the flash of sunglasses here and there. Apart from the lull of the monks' earlier intervention it had been so wild, as if the men were fearlessly exposing their souls to the mountain. I had never seen such an uninhibited display of worship and was astonished to have witnessed such primitive, raw energy in the men that now sat passively around me, sipping tea.
And, of course, it had been their practice for hundreds of years – thousands, some locals said. For the Amdo nomads still embrace many of the original shamanistic and Bon disciplines of Tibet, despite their acceptance of Buddhism. In fact, Tibet was one of the last Asian countries to turn to Buddhism and the distinctive characteristics of the Tibetan variety developed in response to the strength of shamanic influence. Tsedup's father explained that their gods are divided into the protectors of nature and the protectors of religion. What I had just witnessed was a ceremony to propitiate the gods of nature.
Because of the hostility of their natural environment, it has always been the nomads' religious preoccupation to tame the land. They place great importance on optimising good luck and minimising bad luck by propitiating the gods that determine their fate. I knew that, in shamanic terms, there are three realms of existence: the sky, the earth and the subterranean. The gods live in the sky, serpent spirits live in the earth and humans live on the earth in between. The elemental nature of each domain is also important: the sky representing space, air and fire; the subterranean realm, earth and water, and all the elements being present in the middle realm.
The most powerful sky gods are those who live on the mountain peaks. These warrior-like gods, called nyen, are violent, territorial lords, who require propitiation with complex ritual and offering such as I had just witnessed. Amnye Kula takes the form of a man carrying a spear and riding a white horse, but others take different forms: for example, the mountain god, Archa, close to Tsedup's brother Gondo's tribe, takes the form of a snake.
The most sacred mountain for all the people of Amdo is Amnye Machen. It is considered the Mount Kailash, Kang Rimpoche, of eastern Tibet and its range rises out of the Amdo plains for 125 miles on an east-west axis. Amnye Machen, the mountain god, is lord above all lords of the earth of Amdo. His name means. 'Ancestor of the Amdo People', and he is the greatest and wildest of the mountain gods. But as well as these masculine, warrior gods, there are also female sky goddesses, dakinis or khandromas, who have an elementally malign nature and are said to eat man's flesh and afflict him in his sexual relationships.
The demi-gods of the subterranean realm are serpent spirits, both male and female, called lu and luma, the spirits of earth and water. In contrast to the mountain gods, who rule with patriarchal authority, the serpent spirits have a sensitive, female nature. They live in the earth, in the rocks, in the lakes and streams. They are black, white or red guardians of ecological balance, preventing human interference with the earth. Precious stones belong to them, and the power of a coral or turquoise stone, so important to the nomads in their traditional dress, is deemed auspicious or inauspicious, depending on its guardian serpent spirit's satisfaction with how it was mined and how it has been looked after. According to shamanistic belief, the mining of gold or iron is offensive to the serpent spirits, like stealing from them. Even digging a hole in the ground could risk offending them, and Tsedup told me once that his mother would not leave one tent peg in the ground when they moved to new pasture, for fear of wounding the earth. With all this in mind, it was hard to imagine a more devastating proposition than that which was presented to them when the Chinese began gold-mining recently on a holy mountain in Machu.
The middle domain is inhabited by minor gods, more intimately related to humans and their daily domestic life than the mountain gods and the serpent spirits. They have specific functions and include home gods, who provide protection for the family, a god of horses and of cattle. All of these gods need to be appeased to ensure the success and well-being of a nomad family and its herds in this hostile environment. The rituals are said once to have included animal sacrifice or marcho, blood offering, but when the influence of Buddhism prohibited this, ritual fire-offering or garchot, non-blood offering, became the favoured method of propitiation.
The shamans also believed in 'pegging' the earth. This ritual, which was adopted by Buddhist yogis, was employed to control the earth and render it submissive. The ndashung that marked the tops of holy mountains were to bind the earth and spirit powers, taming them through penetration. The mountains themselves are said to peg the earth like nails or phurbas, ritual daggers, piercing and securing it. On a human level, the chortens, stone monuments, I had seen upon entering Amdo were like symbolic mountains suppressing the demonic forces beneath them.
The other major pre-Buddhist religious influence on the Amdo nomads was the Bon religion. Even after Buddhism had replaced it, it still maintained a hold on people in areas as far away as Amdo, which had always enjoyed strong separatist tendencies, especially among the nomads.
The Bonpos also believed in taming and placating the spiritual powers of the environment, gods, demons and spirits. They were devout ritualists who, like the shamanists, sought to keep the old Tibetan gods favourably inclined to human activity. Before the Buddhists transformed the gods into part of the Buddha-dharma, the Bonpos were propitiating them and using their power to maximise human luck. As with the shamans, they focused on the earth-lords and serpent spirits, who controlled the fertility of the land, animals and their own human power, which is why it was so important to placate them.
Another Bon ritual still practised by the nomads included divination, which took many forms. Tsedup had told me that his father would sometimes burn a sockwa, the shoulder blade of a sheep, and foretell future events in the cracks left on its scorched surface.
I had learnt all of these things from Tsedup. I remember him telling me that he had never understood the need for western mountaineers to 'conquer' mountains. For him it was tantamount to hubris. He once saw a documentary about Hillary and Tenzing's ascent of Cho Mo Langma or Mount Everest, as it is called in the West. As they reached the peak, Hillary laid claim to his defeated giant with the arrogance of a big-game hunter, while Tenzing humbly gave thanks to the mountain spirit. A mountain may be tamed and worshipped, but never conquered. Even then, Tsedup's reaction to that TV documentary had seemed to me like a lesson in ecology.
Now, it was fascinating to be witnessing the propagation of these ancient rites. But as I pondered what I had seen, it struck me that I had had no relationship with the land. I'm sure that if I had grown up in the Scottish Highlands or on a ranch in Wyoming I would at least have felt a oneness with the environment, but perhaps, even then, not in the same way. I was a suburban girl. The land, the subtle transition of the seasons, the smell of the earth and real dirt right down in the skin were strange to me. Apart from the joy of a country walk, I had had no previous experience of belonging to nature. These people belonged to the land and respected it with astounding, to me, reverence. Their understanding of the transient nature of life was intrinsic, acknowledged, respected, digested. It was at the heart of nomadic life, along with the acceptance of the swift and unpredictable passage of life and death.
I learnt not just to look, but to see. As I walked in the grassland the next day, I beheld the indefinable strength and solidity of the omnipresent mountains, which seemed like benevolent ancestors contemplating with amusement the scurrying descendants beneath them. Their sunny slopes betrayed a more sinister aspect and their shadows seemed darker. They held curious forms. To the north, they resembled slumbering figures with hulking shoulders slunk into the pit of the land; their valleys and ridges, flesh folds and backbones rolling over and into each other, settled and still. To the south, they receded in waves, peak after trough, until the last visible tips faded into a dusky blue, leaving us behind in their wake. I had never had a true sense of scale until I came here. How frail the tent appeared against this background. Nothing more than a wind-teased flap of black fabric supported by spidery legs that could scuttle away in an instant.
This was my home.