Field notes
The journal
What we've learned walking this city — written when there's something worth saying, not on a schedule.
Tibet2 min read
Yadong — The Chumbi Valley, Where Tibet Meets India and Bhutan
Yadong sits in the Chumbi valley, a low green finger of Tibet with Sikkim on one side and Bhutan on the other. For a century it was the main trade artery between Tibet and British India.
Tibet2 min read
Tuiwa — A Village at 5,070 Metres
Tuiwa is one of the highest permanently inhabited villages on earth, on the shore of Puma Yumco in southern Tibet. In winter the flocks are walked across the ice to graze an island.
Tibet2 min read
Rutog — The Empty Corner of Tibet
Rutog is in the far northwest of Tibet at over 4,300 metres, with a population density close to zero. It holds prehistoric petroglyphs, the Chinese end of Pangong Lake, and the dogs that make life here possible.
Tibet2 min read
Pagsum Lake — A Monastery on an Island in a Sacred Lake
Basum Tso is a holy lake of the Nyingma school, ringed by conifer forest rather than bare plateau, with a small island monastery reached by a footbridge.
Tibet2 min read
The Nu River Road — 72 Bends Down to the Salween
The road drops off the plateau into the Nu river gorge in a stack of 72 counted switchbacks. It's the most photographed piece of tarmac in Tibet, and the river below it runs all the way to the Andaman Sea.
Tibet3 min read
Mount Kailash — The Holiest Mountain in Asia
Kailash is sacred to Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Bön alike. Pilgrims walk a 52-kilometre circuit over a 5,600-metre pass; some do it in a day, some take three weeks prostrating.
Tibet2 min read
Medog — The Last County in China to Get a Road
Until 2013, Medog was the only county in China with no road. It sits where the Yarlung Tsangpo turns south and drops off the plateau — so it's Tibetan, and it's also rainforest.
Tibet2 min read
Lulang — The Alpine Meadow Tibet Isn't Supposed to Have
Lulang looks like a Swiss valley that got lost: fenced meadows, dark conifer forest, wooden houses and grazing yak, at 3,300 metres in eastern Tibet. The comparison is lazy and also fair.
Tibet3 min read
Lhasa — Where Every Tibetan Road Ends
Lhasa is a pilgrimage destination first and a city second, and it shows in how the place is organised. Everything is arranged around walking clockwise.
Tibet2 min read
Laigu Glacier — Six Glaciers, One Valley
Six glacier tongues converge on the valley above Laigu village in eastern Tibet, feeding a lake that shouldn't be that colour. It's the largest maritime glacier complex in the country and among the most accessible.
Tibet2 min read
The Kangbu Hot Springs — Medicine in the Himalayan Foothills
Tibetan medicine has classified these waters for centuries, and people still travel to sit in them. The setting — a wooded valley below the Himalaya — is half the treatment.
Tibet2 min read
Chentang — China's Sherpa Valley
Everyone associates Sherpas with Nepal. A small community lives on the north side of the range too, in valleys so deep and warm that Himalayan Tibet turns into rainforest.
Tibet3 min read
Chamdo — Rural Tibet, and a Church Beside a Salt Field
Chamdo is eastern Tibet — Kham, the horse-and-monastery half of the plateau. Down on the Mekong it also holds a thousand hand-built salt pans and a French mission church still holding mass.