བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ།

བཀའ་དྲིན་ཆེ། (pronounced kgwah din chey) is Tibetan for “thank you”.

A previous post talked about one of my farthest journeys to the Gansu province in China where I ultimately had the amazing opportunity to have dinner with Tibetan nomads. This is a thank you post to our Tibetan host where I will share more about the experience with my Tibetan friends.

How do you end up dining with Tibetan nomads? It’s not like you can just venture out to the middle of nowhere China, knock on a tent, and ask what’s cookin’. Our local connection who was a professor at the Gansu University we were visiting had a Tibetan student who had graduated and was back in the grasslands with his family. Despite them being nomads the teacher was able to keep in communication with him and he offered to host us for a meal. No address, no toilet, but in 2022 the younger generation of Tibetans have cellphones, 5G, and a small solar block for charging.

The group I was with that would trek out to the grasslands included 5 Americans (including me), 3 Thai, and another Tibetan student. We hired a driver for the day. The first leg of the trip was from Hezuo to Xiahe where we took a brief stop at the Lebrang monastery.

My travel journal was full of pages of calligraphy. I would practice daily and won the award of best student calligraphy : )

The next couple of hours were spent driving on dirt roads until the road came to a complete end. Our Tibetan host met us there with his moped. I was the first to hop on and he zipped us through the grasslands to his family’s tent. His mother and aunt were already busy preparing a meal. We all squished in their tent and started asking the son hundreds of questions to learn more about nomadic life.

We were first served yak milk tea, with a hefty chunk of yak butter. Next on the menu was yak meat soup with noodles, cooked on a small stove in the tent fueled by yak poop. For dessert, we had the traditional Tibetan treat Tsamba (roasted barley flour mixed with yak butter) and some delicious yak yogurt. Our hosts were so kind, even after I accidentally knocked their shrine to the Dalai Lama over.

After the meal we watched as our hosts continued on with their nightly routine of bringing in their yak. The male yak went into their pen and the females lined up to be milked. This was one of the richest cultural experiences I have ever had. It was a glimpse into how life worked thousands of years ago.

Nomadic Tibetan life revolves around Yak.