By bus the terrain is negotiated at a measured pace, crawling at times along a faint outline of road submerged in ice. Occasionally we'd take a bend in the tundra and the roof would lift off, unveiling jagged ribbons of 6,000-meter Himalayan canines. Elsewhere, the landscape was steppe-like with an impressive scale. It's big sky country, presented in a pallet of simple pastels.
When the pavement ended, the going got rough, and the road regressed to a denuded state of moonscape. The most precarious sections were deeply rutted, thawing mud, well suited for swallowing up rear axles. I witnessed half a dozen trucks fallen prey - laying sideways or capsized on the shoulder, the drivers asleep inside guarding their freight.
How do people live up here?? At 6:30am the quiet world was still asleep. Yak herds sat motionless, awaiting the sun's encouragement to begin nibbling at permafrost. Tibetan outposts were neatly laid out in boxes of stones, with colorfully decorated wooden window frames punched through. The Tibetans themselves, many of them cowboys in their own Wild West, could be mistaken for Native Americans insofar as their Mongoloid features and long, cinder-black hair. It's not an easy life they lead, but there's certainly no shortage of cultural and scenic wealth.
