Mountain Life

Woman working in the field after planting. She is wearing typical Tibetan turqoise earrings.

Vulture

Dho-taraph literally means "valley of good quality horses." 'Ta' meaning horse in Tibetan. A traditional source of income for many years is selling their horses to the Tibetans and Chinese.

There is a temple here that currently has no lama. Reportedly, this gompa contains teachings and texts of the 13th Karmapa alongside many Nyingma texts.

Woman on her way to the fields

Phurba, leading yak to the fields for their daily work

Dawa, one of Lhamo's best friends

Yak and men till the soil with a simple single-blade plow and the brute force of the yak. The soil is so hard after the winter that the ground needs to be tilled three times before planting.

Women rake over the newly planted barley after the plowing

New friends

Enjoying the sunshine after a snow

Satellite phone: the only place in upper Dolpo to make a call. I only made contact with the world outside the valley on two occasions throughout my stay in Dho-taraph: once to wish my mom a happy birthday and another time before beginning my meditation retreat to let my friends in Kathmandu know I was still alive and well

Southern end of the valley

Women on the way to the fields

Tibetan yak-wool blanket fastened by a double-dorje brocade

Typical Dolpo home. The shrubs on the rooftop are to protect against the wind.

Morning commute

Plastic roofed greenhouse. Action Dolpo, an NGO from France has, in addition to funding the Crystal Mountain School in Dho-taraph, has provided the locals with instructions on building greenhouses in order to provide some variety in their diet. The majority of caloric intake comes from barley products which is a good food staple, but with the addition of greenhouses foods such as spinach and broccoli can be grown to supplement their diet.

Mani carvings above doorway

View of a village in Dho-taraph, facing south. Vulture overhead.

Vase-shaped chorten

Chorten in Takshi facing north

Clinic by day, bedroom by night. Mud walls and floors are the norm here as there is no wood to be found above the tree-line.

 

Young girl

Boy wearing lokpa

Yingzin studying English after school.

Lhamo making marza for the evening meal. Since Tibetan food is relatively bland, chili peppers are served with almost everything. I learned a whole list of words in Dolpo that I realize now are a part of the Dolpopa dialect and not congruent with Central Tibetan. I realized this when back in Kathmandu I asked someone in Tibetan to pass the marza, which prompted strange looks as the word for chili in Tibetan in 'sibang.'

Lhakpa's father, Rinzin. Rinzin is the strong and silent type. A rugged man who takes joy in the simple pastoral-agrarian life of Dolpo. Like Tsering, Rinzin always made sure I had what I needed while I was there and was always quick to pour another glass of chang in the evenings. He is well-respected amongst the other villagers.

Lhakpa's mother, Tsering. Their family was so good to me while I was there. Ama (mother) took care of me making sure I had enough to eat and drink at all times of the day. I really appreciated her once I was no longer staying at their home as they had gone into the mountains to pick yarsa gumbu. Its difficult to make the short list of foods that are available tasty and she was one of the few who managed to keep me interested in food.I provided her with acupuncture treatment for her dizziness and hearing loss. I was concerned about her pulses and referred her to the Tibetan amchi as I thought she needed herbal medicine to support her long-term after I would be gone. She saw Amchi Pema and he agreed that she needed supplementation with men-tsa (herbal medicine) as her condition was a result of deep deficiency.

This morning began with Phurba, waking me up in order to get a treatment for his shoulder pain.  He had been playing para, the gambling game where one forcefully throws dice from a wooden cup onto a leather disk whilst yelling wildly.  Then, sticks and rocks are moved around the leather disk and someone eventually wins all the money, and someone loses.  I don’t know if Phurba won or lost, but at any rate he came out with some shoulder pain.  Phurba was my first patient early in the morning.  Following breakfast, I decided to wash my clothes and self for the first time in far too long in the river of cold glacial-melt (yeah, you wouldn’t want to get naked for that either!)  Since I haven’t heard western music for some time, every time the word river enters my thoughts, I get Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” stuck in my head.

The water is cold, but if you wash at the right time of day, like 10 or 11 when its still sunny before the wind picks up, it can be quite refreshing and satisfying.  Instead of looking at a plastic shower curtain with multicolored fish printed on it, one is out in the open in the sun, in the same state one came into the world, and with a 360 degree view of snow-mountains.  I’ll take that view and that cold any day over the vinyl fishes inside any bathroom.  After washing myself, I had to teach myself how to wash my clothes by hand.  This is done easiest by stretching the wet clothes over a flat rock in the river and applying soap, which can be spread by hand or with another small flat rock to get the dirt out.  It takes me far too long to do my laundry this way, but it gives me a much-needed break from the patients of the morning.  It’s a little different here in that I don’t have office hours.  I oftentimes wake up in the morning and open my eyes to find a patient staring at me awaiting a treatment.  Anytime I walk anywhere in the valley the women working in the fields come to me when they see me walking and hold out their wrists for me to take their pulse and tell me their problems in Tibetan which I don’t always understand.

Anyway, upon returning to Lhakpa’s house, there were already 5 patients waiting for a treatment.

Over my western clothes I now wear a layperson’s chupa in order to protect against the wind/snow/rain.  The locals seem to enjoy it that I am wearing their traditional clothing and take it as a sign of my respect for their culture.  I always seem to tie it wrong and Lhakpa’s sister, Lhamo always has to retie the belt for me.  When she ties it, it feels like my 12^th ribs are at risk of breaking of and any thought of breathing for the day is basically crossed off the list of things to do.  I know now to go to Lhakpa’s mother to help with the tying if I want to breath properly on special days.

Despite the reason previously listed concerning cultural respect, the added bonus of wearing the chupa here is that the ladies think it’s handsome.  This makes me forget about the not breathing bit without pause!

Currently there are two amchi’s (Tibetan medical practitioners) to treat all of Dho-taraph valley.  This is why I’ve been so busy since I got here.  There are way more patients than the amchi’s have time to see and the distance to cover between villages is far too great.  I found out that one of the amchi’s, Amchi Nyima, had been ill now for quite some time and began making home visits.  Basically the state of Dho-taraph now is that there is only one amchi, as Amchi Nyima is unable to travel to make the home visits or collect the medicinal plants from the mountains.  I enjoyed my time treating him and Lhakpa translated our conversations between each other.  For me to meet an old seasoned practitioner of his caliber was very special to me.  We shared information about taking the pulse and so forth.  He told me to learn Tibetan so that next time he can tell me more without having to use a translator as he wants to teach me amchi medicine.  Though it was I treating him, I feel like I was the one who really benefited by our meetings.  There aren’t many of these men left up there which is why I am going to put my best foot forward in order to help sponsor the school for Tibetan medicine in Dho-taraph Valley.

After this home visit went to treat a 70-year old woman with bilateral knee pain.  She was crotchety and quite funny telling all the other younger women what to do.

In the evening I was finally able to do some seated meditation practice before dinner.  Ama-la made my favorite, thentuk, which I accidentally had three bowls of.  Tomorrow Lhakpa has to work so I am able to go to Dho to the satellite phone in order to call my mom for her birthday.