Small Adventures, Great Joy: Improvising the Day in a Tibetan Town
The sun woke up happy in this Tibetan town to accompany last night’s sorrows. I hadn’t seen the sun for two weeks, so I dashed through my empty hostel room to get some much needed vitamin d, letting the sun touch my wrinkled hands, damp from sweaty gloves.
“Tashi Delek” cried children swinging on their parents arms. Each person genuinely delighted to see me, greeting me warmer than those relatives you see once a decade. I was a stranger in their home, but I felt invited.
It was like those moments when you enter a party and everyone that's a bit tipsy is overly excited to see you walk in. Now imagine a whole town, curiously happy to share space with you. Visibly I was the only tourist in town, besides the Chinese students on vacation (to whom Tibetans innocently asked which country they hail from), but there was no sense of the "other." I hiked past a monastery and mountain grazing yaks to see a group of Buddhist monks-in-training children playing. Impulsively I joined them and they asked me to help them build a snowman. My gloves made rounds between children in the group while we morphed cold snow into a lopsided man,
Here was an energy that none other in my life could match. They raced up to me and pulled me on their improvised toboggan made of Tibetan prayer flags and other scraps. I laughed hysterically pretending to be a snowboarder while they took turns ditching their phones and trying the new toy.
We took a couple impromptu photos, even they had preferences about how to take the perfect “selfie,” until they scattered back for lessons. I let my excitement determine my steps further so I hiked up, pausing every twenty feet to catch my breath, the high elevation knocking me out with a taste of blood in the back of my throat.
Carefully side stepping around stray dogs and chompin’ yaks, I met two friends with a motorbike up at 13,000ft. We spoke in body language and confusion but eventually they understood I wanted to hitch down the face of this mountain with them, on the back of their motorcycle. Not the least bit hesitant they took me on and shortly after we found ourselves flung over the handlebars falling at a near 90 degree angle. No harm done, the three of us jumped back on.
Dropping me off at my hostel, I entered the lobby, or the owner's living room, with extended cousins and family friends visiting the business owners. Some broken English later and I was invited to eat pieces of the dried yak carcass that lay on the table. Not a head, a thigh or foot, but the whole damn thing. My pretentious attempts at veganism whispered in my ear but I thanked their hospitality by ripping off a piece and sandwiching it with tsampa and butter tea (a local delicacy). Yak’s have a high energy content because they graze at high altitudes, meaning their blood contains more hemoglobin and their bodies have less fat. Thus the energy I felt after this meal almost disturbed my plans for sleep and I understood why hikers in these climates chose to eat this meat (goodluck vegetarians).
And so I remember thinking here, high up in a tiny Tibetan town, that I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. But for the next few weeks I suffered tiny boils and a rad burn on the part of my face not covered by hat or bandana. A shiny red that made my face look like the Polish flag. Not the souvenir I wanted, but the unrestrained feelings I felt, of a culture living wildly with their environment and open to each other affected my every cell. I could’ve died a happy death because I witnessed and experienced real joy in the shadows of these mountains. And though sunscreen would’ve been wise, the satisfaction I carry with me since that day was a great consequence, a great token of a culture living freely within the reality of their lives.
