Two winters ago, I took a long, lonely walk through the highlands of a prefecture on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau in north-western China. Vivid memories still linger: the spearmint-fresh air in my lungs, the sky rinsed of clouds, streams braiding through valleys, ice crystals forming at their rims. For hours, I saw no one; just yaks and sheep grazing the slopes. Each hill crest led onto another, in an endless roll of frost-yellowed grassland that was meditative in its monotony.
I had come to report an HTSI story on Norlha, a textile atelier in the village of Ritoma, where members of Tibetan nomad families and former nomads spin yak down, known as khullu, into cashmere-soft scarves and coats. I’d also hoped to stay at Norden camp, Norlha’s hospitality spin-off about an hour and a half to the west, but arrived a few weeks too late: the camp had just shut down for a complete rebuild after its first decade of operations.