The Princess and the Mani Stones
“I always wanted to come to Yushu. It’s our duty to walk this road at least once,” a Tibetan man explained in Mandarin. Jyekundo is the native name of the town Yushu in the Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a vast area of southwest Qinghai province comprised of expansive grasslands and snow-capped peaks perched some 3,680 metres above sea level. Overhead, hungry eagles circle. Noticing my ominous glances to the heavens, he told me smilingly, “When we die, we leave our bodies on the hillside to be eaten by the birds. We wouldn’t want to remain in one place like a grave.” Approximately half the Tibetan massif’s inhabitants are nomadic, and I concluded that even in death, the nomadic spirit is retained.
Life on a storm-swept tableland where frostbite and
