Step into the local flow of life

1. The migration you will join

To balance the pasture and the herd, the herders of Manigango and the surrounding grassland move seasonally, giving the grass time to grow. There are usually two large migrations in a year. In early July, when the grass is at its richest and the water is plentiful, the animals leave the winter pasture and move up to the higher, cooler summer pasture. In late September and early October they make a brief stay at the autumn pasture, and in late November, when the temperature falls and the grass thins, they move again, in force, to the winter pasture.

Migration is the most important thing in a herder's year, and the scale of it is enormous — and full of life. The men go first, carrying tents, the iron stove, pots and pans, bedding and food, to set up at the new camp. If a vehicle can reach it, they go by tractor, pickup, or motorbike; if the road gives out, they take the luggage as far as the vehicle can manage, and then carry it on foot. The old black tents are fewer now; what the herders use is mostly the white tent issued by the government.

A day or two later, the whole family moves: by motorbike, on horseback, or on foot, driving a hundred head of yak and horse out of the home valley and up toward the high meadows, the side gorges, the glacier valleys, slow and enormous — the same journey their great-grandparents made.

There are also the closer pastures, only a few tens of minutes on foot from the village. Even at that distance, the view keeps changing. The grass on the slope, the tents, the cattle — that sense of living in a city of the sky, pure and peaceful, is for the herders themselves another way of being, quite different from the winter and the spring.

2. The herding you will experience

In Manigango, time is set by the sun, by the frost, and by the pace of the yak.

In summer the days lengthen. The first milking is at five or six in the morning, and the herd is driven up to the meadow at the cloud line. The second milking is at five or six in the afternoon. By eight or nine, before the dark, the herd is home. The new calves and the smaller animals stay close to the tent, tethered at night against predators. People love to play with the calves — embrace them, stroke their soft fur, kiss them, run with them across the grass.

In autumn, to build the yak's winter reserves and protect the pregnancies, herding starts later in the morning, around nine, so the cows do not eat grass that is still touched by frost. They return at five or six in the afternoon as before, and the herders deliberately guide the herd toward the shrubby pasture that is rich in nutrition.

Winter herding is an outdoors life at its hardest. The herd has to range further and higher, even onto the high barren ground. In those days you will be alongside the herders, picking up and sun-drying dung, filtering the winter milk, cleaning the pasture cabin, fetching spring water from the mountain. The rest of the day is your own — sit by the stove, talk, drink tea, write in your notebook, play with the herders or their children. Around four in the afternoon you set off with the herders to bring the cattle home, crossing the snow slope or climbing up the ridge to find them. It is as if you have stepped into a world of ice. What your feet touch is a piece of land that is, in its own way, primitive, raw, and forceful.

Before the sun sets you will help drive the hundred-odd yak back, threading the cows into the corral ropes, while the calves find their own mothers and lean against them. If the next day brings heavy snow, the yak have to stay in the pen, and you will feed them with the hay you have set aside.

All in all, here, you put yourself into another time. There is no signal, no modern convenience. What you wear, what you eat, where you sleep — all of it touches the ground. That is what makes a person feel how small he is — and that, in turn, is what makes him devout.

3. Summer butter, autumn dung

Making butter and gathering and processing dung run through the herder's four seasons, but they belong most of all to summer and autumn.

The butter-making you will go through —

Summer (July to September) is the high season. The yak are at their richest in milk, and the butter that comes out of it is a deep yellow, and sweet. At around five in the morning you will be alongside the women of the household, milking the yak, pouring the fresh milk into a pot and warming it gently over a low fire to thirty or forty degrees. The old way, by hand, is to pour the warm milk into a wooden butter barrel and churn it up and down with the whole body, nearly a thousand times, so that the fat separates and floats to the top. These days the herders mostly use an electric separator, which is faster and easier on the body. The butter that comes out is fished up, patted into a round or a square, and set in the shade to cool and set. In the past they stored it in cowhide bags or sheep-stomach bags; now it is mostly plastic. In winter, when the milk is less and thicker, the butter that comes out is a paler "white butter," lower in fat, said to moisten the lungs and ease a cough, and is what the elderly and the children eat.

If you want to try the making and gathering of dung —

Yak dung is called "the treasure of the high plateau." It is the fuel the herders cannot do without, for cooking three meals a day and for warming themselves through the winter. Well-made dung has no smell at all, and its ash returns to the dust; it is an extraordinarily eco-friendly kind of cycle. The herders mainly use the dung that the yak drop in autumn — at that time the parasites are coming to the end of their breeding cycle, and the infection pressure is much lower. The autumn plateau has little rain, plenty of sun, and strong wind; the dung dries fast, does not go mouldy, burns hot, gives off little smoke, and has no smell. It is the best possible fuel to lay in for the winter.

If you want to try the gathering and the making, you can take a wicker basket and a small iron-shovel with a wooden handle and, while you are out herding, scoop the fresh dung into the basket. This is not only for the fuel itself — it also has the side effect of keeping the pasture clean and reducing the parasites. Then you spread the wet dung out on flat, sunny, well-ventilated ground, take a handful, and pat it into a round cake on a stone. The cake form gives it a larger surface area, so it can take in the sun and the wind, and stacks firmly without being blown away. After one to two weeks of sun, the water in the cake has all gone, the color has turned a pale grey-brown, and the texture is hard and light.

Once it is fully dry, the herders gather the dung cakes into bags and carry them home. If the mountain shelter is nearby, they lay them up outside the tent or against the courtyard wall, brick by brick, into a tall "dung wall." This is not just a distinctive feature of the herding landscape; it is the warmth that will carry the whole family through the winter. A zero-waste ecological cycle, turning what the land gives into winter heat — that is the quiet wisdom of how the high-plateau people live alongside nature.

4. The mountain shelter at night — or a tent

Both winter and summer, the pastures are sometimes close at hand, and sometimes set into a gorge that is hard to reach. Some are near a town, some are out in the wilderness as if on another planet — no vehicle can get there, and you can only ride a horse, ride a motorbike, or walk. And that is a different kind of experience altogether: a glacier valley in winter, a wild hot spring in summer…

If you would like to stay, you can sleep in the herder family's tent, and spend a real pastoral evening alongside them. Perhaps there is a barrier of language, but there is no barrier of heart.

Or you can pitch your tent beside theirs. You may find yourself in a hot spring pool, watching an entire sunset unfold, the sound of yak-bells, the slow pace of the yak; the herders may come back from the mountains with herbs, or with plants for the fire, and invite you into the home for tea, for a meal. When the night comes, you will see an enormous moon rise from somewhere below the horizon — bright, taking the central place in the sky. Or the whole Milky Way will surface out of the dark, the stars so dense, so clear, so near and so far at the same time. Between the whole of the earth and the whole of the stars, it can feel as if there is only you.

Within a forty-kilometre radius of Manigango town, there is a full inventory of world-class natural beauty, far more than any single visit can hold. We have sorted a handful of these places into day-hike destinations, reachable in a single round trip.

But these are not just walks for the body. The land here has a particular field to it — a particular presence, both in the unaltered terrain and in the herders who live on it seasonally — and the walk is also a kind of inner passage.

From pasture to glacier, below Mt. Chola

Standing on the riverside pasture just outside Mt. Chola, the first thing you do is face that deep, magnetic snow mountain across the way. The road we are taking is a walk toward it. First through the herders' grassland, then through the lake of Xinluhai ringed by the snow peaks, then along the forested lake edge, into a valley where few people go — gradually closer to the glacier, closer to the place where the mountain deity lives.

If it is summer, you may pick up a bag of wild mushrooms along the way; in autumn, the countless purple flowers floating on the meadow feel like the visible form of the god of color; as deep winter sets in, you may come across yaks walking across the snow, walking onto the frozen lake, the whole field of the place cold, extremely vast, haunting, and luminous.

Rinco circumnavigation and the mountain walk

Next door to Xinluhai, we drive another small village road, past a few pasture cabins in the rift valley, to Rinco. In the winter half of the year, the mountains ringing the lake are mostly under snow, the pure white world probably the cleanest place on earth; in the summer half, in the right season, you will see the rhododendrons ringing the mountain, the dense wildflowers, the lake water flowing over the plank-and-log footbridges down toward the village; in the brief autumn, it briefly shows a face of abundance.

Here, we walk the lake. Between stretches, we sit, meditate, just watch the water move, let the mountain wind pass through our bodies and minds; or, from the side, we climb toward the peak of Mt. Chola, to meet the hare, to meet the musk deer, to meet the gods.

Quxi village herb-forager's trail

This is another valley in the Mt. Chola block, carved by tectonic movement — the secret place Achuo has written about in her book.

She has not written about the scenery here, only because this is where the villagers go to dig for medicinal herbs, where they pasture in summer, and where you see the real life of people who are prostrate on the ground. Snow-melt water runs down from above and gathers into a lake. In spring, the people crouch along the two sides of the lake looking for herbs, walking from the lake edge into the deep, mysterious mountain. In summer, two fixed herding families pitch their tents here, pasture and live.

We will first reach the lake, visit the herders, perhaps invite them along, take the small path around the lake edge, and from the deserted herb-foraging path go on into the depths — to see the landscape that, apart from locals, almost no one has ever visited.

The three connected lakes above Co'a

These are the alpine lakes of the neighboring township.

We drive out from Manigango, past the wide grassland road, the dazzling morning light, the gold roof of the monastery, and turn into a forest track. We climb all the way, through vast stretches of old forest and higher pasture, where the flowers spread out like a carpet. We reach the pass, cross the ridges, and you will see the sharp peaks in the distance; keep climbing, round more than ten steep hairpins, and a red mountain mass opens out before you. Perhaps that huge, sharp rock has been dusted with the first snow of autumn, but the middle of the mountain is still green — the whole mountain solemn, beautiful, looking down on the world.

Our walk winds along the slopes above the lake. From the high ground looking down, the water shifts in an instant with the weather — blue, or the deepest blue; the mountain behind it reveals its shape, its lines, its color, its mystery in the play of light. A little further, looking across the valley at the mountain on the other side, you watch it change from one moment of sun to the next.

If you finally make your way down to the lake's edge, try doing what the locals do: pick up stones from the ground, pile up a little mani cairn of your own, and pay your respect to the lake god.

Xueke village pasture path

This destination is guided by two mountains.

The road runs on, between two beautiful mountains, into the uninhabited. Halfway along, a tall, beautiful mountain suddenly appears — a deep red body, sharp peaks and ridgelines, the mountain changing its size and angle as the vehicle moves. In summer, the slopes and meadows at the foot of the mountain are so lush that the herders settle their lives and their yaks there, keeping it company; in winter, only the mountain remains, deeper, more magnificent, standing alone in the world.

Our vehicle passes the mountain on the way, arrives at a riverside pasture beside the paved road. The walking route starts here: a small path will lead us upstream along the river, past a hot spring, past a few tents, past a few bends, past stretches of summer wildflowers or winter snow, to a meadow close in front of the mountain, where we gaze at it. If your heart is searching for some mountain, here, in this place only herders and wild animals have set foot, the mountain standing silent in the world, might be the one that touches you.

Gegong village hot-spring expedition

This is another place that even the local villagers and herders rarely know about.

We will drive to the end of the road, then follow a small path upstream along the river. Along the way, the herders' summer tents dot the riverbank, the meadow runs yellow with the abundance of wildflowers. You will see white and black tents, the smoke from the herders' kitchens, the yaks roaming on the land — a life on the ground that is quiet, wide, and vast.

If it is winter, this becomes a much longer snow hike. The snow erases every trace of people; the world is left with the most extreme solemnity, silence, and grandeur, only a hidden path stretching through the snow. If we insist on walking into the uninhabited, crossing the old summer pasture, crossing a glacial river, we will reach the wild hot spring by the plain's river.

In summer, we arrive here at dusk, sit down in the wild spring pool, and live through an entire, full sunset, watch the yaks and the sheep come home through the twilight. When the night falls, a half-moon or a full moon slowly rises from upstream in the river, and then come the stars, the Milky Way, and the whole vast sky. In winter, it is a different kind of expedition across the snow — a kind of walk toward the warmth of the earth's body.

Mani village canyon to an alpine lake

This is a hiking route not far from the town.

In summer, we drive first to a herder's mid-mountain pasture, to see the residents of the city in the sky, and the pace of their life. Then, perhaps the whole way is on foot, or perhaps the herder rides a motorbike or leads a horse, taking you along a stretch of mountain road. Then we go down, and from a small path on the meadow slope start to walk, joining a small glacial stream, and we keep going up, to a small lake close to the peak. It is small, hidden, like a mountain hermit, so still, hidden in the hard-to-reach peaks. When you have come, by various kinds of transport and by a devout walk, to this more hidden destination, you will receive your due — the echo in the heart that only the untouched wild can give.

These are the day-hike routes we have set up for the friends who come. They are not really outdoor adventures; they are a way of going deep into local life and the natural environment. From the morning of the hike, you will have one of our local friends with you the whole way, guiding. If there is a need, we will bring a horse, ride a motorbike, to take you through the parts of the walk that are hard to do on foot, or to save some of your energy, so that you have enough attention and space to feel how you, and that particular natural environment, can come together.

The wild feast

Perhaps on the same day, or on another chosen day, in another chosen place, we set out on purpose. By the lake, at the foot of the snow mountain, beside the hot spring, in the most fitting scenery, we spread out a cloth, prepare some music and some drink, set aside the cluttered thoughts of the mind, stop thinking and judging, and just sit quietly with the lake, the snow peak, the hot spring, the creatures, and the truest part of yourself.

This is a way of going deep into nature, and a purification of the mind and spirit.

Whether it is a walk or a wild feast, it follows the state of your heart and what the moment brings. Perhaps Achuo is there, or another guide, or a local monk. At the right time we share some words of the spirit, and walk together into a meditation in the wild.

Pujas

In Tibetan country, the large gatherings are mostly held in the monasteries according to the Tibetan calendar, and are called pujas. They are both a memorial of the great events of the Buddha's life, and a transmission of the highest tantric teachings. The most visually striking part of a puja is the cham dance, in which the monks, wearing masks and ceremonial robes, perform the steps of the teaching and subdue the demons. The monastic community also chants together, praying for the well-being of the laypeople and the dispelling of disaster.

Before some pujas, the monks spend several days building a complex sand mandala out of colored mineral grains, a symbol of the order of the universe; when the puja ends, the mandala is swept away, to mean that all things are impermanent. In some pujas, senior lamas also perform initiations or empowerments.

These ceremonies, even for those who are not Tibetan Buddhists, may be hard to grasp on the level of doctrine — but if you are there in person, you will feel their impact and their cleansing of the heart, or you may, in the moment the mandala is swept away, have a taste of the impermanence of all things.

A great puja is not only a spiritual event; it is also a town gathering. The laypeople come with folding chairs, sit around and watch; around the grounds, food tents and small stalls set up shop, the air full of tea smoke and the smell of food — a lively, unmistakably Tibetan living atmosphere.

Manigango's most important pujas are usually in late July or early August (Guru Rinpoche's birthday), or around Losar, the Tibetan New Year. Because the dates shift with the Tibetan calendar, please confirm them with us in advance.

Visit guidelines: dress with decorum — no shorts, no short skirts, no spaghetti straps; in the main prayer hall, do take off your hat and your sunglasses; no photography inside the hall, no flash during the cham, ask the monks before photographing them; do not point at a buddha image with a single finger — use the open palm, all five fingers together; do not touch a monk's head; pass and receive things with both hands.

Gesar epic theater

In the neighboring township of Co'a, every summer the Gesar epic theater is performed — a folk activity that has been going on here for a hundred years. The theater was born at Dege's Trüchen monastery, created in 1870 by the monastery's fifth abbot, Tupten Chöying Dorje, and is based on the Gesar epic, which is a national intangible cultural heritage of China.

The performance is usually held on the open meadow by the Tashi Chö forest, with several dozen actors in traditional dress, wearing hand-made masks, performing in the old, plain steps the classic chapters such as "The Birth" and "The Horse-Race Coronation." The singing blends the lugü and the free folk-song styles, the language is condensed, the mythical stories and the memory of the people merged into one. As a living transmission, the theater continues here in the old-passing-down-to-the-new arrangement, and the actors, while holding on to the traditional core, also make modest innovations to suit contemporary taste. During the performance, herders and farmers in the surrounding area bring their families, pitch tents, and watch with Tibetan food and drink.

If you visit Manigango in summer, we will go together to the meadow, sit on the ground like the locals, and feel the grandeur of the Gesar theater in the sound of cymbals and singing, and at the same time catch a glimpse of the past, epic history of the grassland people.

Horse-racing festival

Manigango's horse-racing festival (the Gesar Arts Festival) comes from the ancient tradition of the Ashü grassland, and carries the local philosophy of life about strength and courage, set against the background of the "horse-race coronation." It is not a tourist event, but a pure festival of life.

In July and August, the various villages hold their horse races — for example, a two-day race in Quxi village, or the large biennial gathering at Mani village. The villagers set up great tents, and they come in their finest dress. The heart of the festival is the racing and the horsemanship: the riders in their finery, wearing their inherited jewelry, dress up the horses as "color horses." There is straight racing, and there are high-difficulty performances, like picking something up from the ground at a full gallop. During the horse-racing festival, there is a different program every day — on the opening day, the traditional dress performance; then, the large-scale guozhuang dance, free-form dance, and various collective games. The most exciting of all is the yak-riding race: the yak are hard to tame, do not like to be ridden, and do not run in a straight line, so the rider is either thrown off, or runs wild together with the yak — the scene is chaotic, thrilling, and funny at once. Men and women, old and young, in their grandest clothes, lay out great food, and revel on the grassland. You may be invited into a local family's tent, and treated to a generous meal. Please restrain yourself a little, because when you walk out of one tent, another family may already be inviting you in.

Shua bazi

"Shua bazi" is a typical folk activity of the western Sichuan plateau, meaning "go to the grassland to play, to gather." In summer, the plateau is cool and the grass is green, and it happens to be the school and monastic-college summer holidays — a good time for family and friends to come together in the natural world. People will bring tents, cooking gear, and food, and stay for a day and a night at the foot of a snow mountain or beside a mountain lake; or they may set out on the spur of the moment, on a beautiful afternoon of light and shadow, with only a Tibetan blanket, a small table, and a four-string dramyin, and go to the grassland, play, sing, melt into the world, and forget themselves. This is by no means a simple outing — it is the most intimate connection between Tibetan people and nature, and between people themselves.

Lungta

Lungta is a holy blessing ritual in Tibetan country. The "lung" is the wind, the "ta" is the horse, so "lungta" means wind-horse — a square piece of paper printed with mantras, a treasure-laden horse, and the totems of the four auspicious animals, the tiger, the lion, the dragon, and the garuda — a symbol of auspiciousness, wisdom, and power. People believe the wind is the messenger that carries the blessing; throw the lungta into the air, and the clear wind carries the prayer, like a horse, to all the world — a wish for one's own peace and the well-being of the family. Lungta can be a collective ritual (such as at Losar, or at a shua bazi to honor the mountain god), or it can be done by a single person at a mountain pass or a saddle where the wind blows. When you throw, you lift it from your chest upward into the air, and leap up, calling out "Lha gyalo!" (May the gods prevail). To protect the ecology, the lungta is now mostly made of rice paper or other degradable material, which dissolves in water.

The deepest magic of film and literature is that they hand you a life you have not lived. In Manigango, what Achuo would like to create for you is exactly this — a moment that may be brief, but feels as real, as rare, and as alive as a scene in a film.

The high country is hard to describe. You have to walk into it yourself — climb, cross rivers, cross meadows, push through the hard part of the walk — and only then, on the real high ground, do you breathe the thin and pure air, see the views no one sees, and meet the herbalist's austere and abundant day. The land gives generously to everything that lives on it; the walk lets you receive it.

Manigango is not rich in edible mushroom species. The families that live closest to the forest, however, do pick the local hedgehog mushroom in summer, and it is a small economy of its own.

We will walk into the forest together, in rain or in sun. The point is the forest itself — to come close to it, to feel it. If we come across an edible species or a wild berry — wild strawberry, sea buckthorn — we will of course pick some, but always in the local way: never too much, and every insect that has taken shelter in the harvest is set free again.

Maybe in a mountain field, on a lake shore, or in the courtyard of a home we are visiting, you will see the children begin to dance when the music starts. The language of the body has no border; their sense of rhythm has no nationality. You will almost certainly begin to move too. The neighbours will hear the music and come over. As if you cannot refuse the beauty that follows the order of the universe, you will join in. So an impromptu celebration is born out of nothing — and becomes your story, your memory.

Here, even though everyone lives a similar life, every household has its own character. Some have many children, some have many monks; some are good at cooking, some are good at singing and dancing; others are painters, or practice the sky burial. A proper meal. A set of traditional Tibetan clothes. An exchange with the warmth of a stove in the room. An unplanned guozhuang dance. The honesty, the warmth, and the hospitality of Tibetan people only show themselves when you meet them in the same honesty — only when you go all in do you enter the other life.

Every place has its own magnetic field — built from the land itself, the history of the people on it, the buildings they have put up, the way they live and the philosophy they live by. It is an organic, felt atmosphere. It passes through the geography and reaches the heart. When you come to Manigango, you have already stepped into that field.

On the outside, it is the grassland, the forest, the rivers, the lakes, the wide sky, the houses, the small town, the monastery, the highway that runs straight on into the horizon. The land and what people have made of it spread out in front of you, all at once.

Looked at from the inside, it is also a deep conversation with yourself. To walk into one of the world's less-touched folds of landscape is also to walk into your own interior. Out in the open, you can sit and meditate alone, or you can sit quietly with a clear-eyed monk. A Tibetan Buddhist kind of sitting lets you fall into the same rhythm as the land. Maybe you will fall into conversation with a monk; maybe the life of the whole place will simply brush against your heart. Either way, it shakes loose new questions — about yourself, about other people, about turning inward or reaching outward. In the end, you may come away with a small understanding.

You may, of course, also have a longer talk with Achuo. She will not sit opposite you as a spiritual teacher. She will sit as a friend, at the right distance, listening to you the way the land listens, and answering you the way the land answers.

When the journey ends, you may have a story. You may have a small change in your heart, or your mind, or both. You may have something harder to name.