
New Year, New Light
On the Tibetan Plateau, Losar, or New Year is the most celebrated event of the year, a time for family reunions, weddings and new beginnings. D...
Read moreOn the Tibetan Plateau, Losar, or New Year is the most celebrated event of the year, a time for family reunions, weddings and new beginnings. D...
Read moreWinter is the wedding season. It is the time of year when the animals stay near the nomad’s winter settlements, feeding on oats or the little g...
Read moreFor rural Tibetans, maximum leisure comes with winter. The harvest long over, farmers turn to other occupations and the bare pasture keeps the ...
Read moreEvery year, Ritoma holds the ceremony of throwing the ‘Torkya’ or Ritual Cake. Triangular in shape and over four feet high, torkyas are red and...
Read moreThere are 13 million yaks on the Tibetan Plateau. Before the age of trade and globalization, they were the center of Tibetan life, providing mi...
Read moreOnce every few years, Ritoma is host to an important lama, usually from Labrang. It is a great honor for the village and local monastery, whose...
Read moreToday, people tend to forget how much we, homo sapiens, have always moved from one place to another. Migration, which happened ‘en masse’ for m...
Read moreRitoma, like many other areas of grassland is a succession of hills and valleys. Nomads pitch their tents on the south facing flank of a hill, ...
Read moreHorses used to be central to life on the Tibetan Plateau, for transportation, herding and symbols of status. The Plateau was famous for its han...
Read moreSagadawa is a holy month during which merit is believed to count manifold over that accumulated at any other time. Tibetan Buddhist culture is ...
Read moreAs the end of the year of the Monkey approaches to give way to that of the Dog, I think about Losar’s attributes: Though it may be cold outside...
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