Namma

was dark and bitterly cold. Annay and I held hands and followed behind the men, slipping on the frosted ground, but she had forgotten her hat, which I ran back to collect from the house. Their neighbour, Annay Gee Gee, called to us to come through her gate as it was a short-cut. We walked through and caught sight of the vehicle that would take them on the seven-day journey. In the light cast from the window of the house in front, I was appalled by what I saw. The truck was piled high with boxes of butter so heavy that it had sunk on its axles. On top of this mountain of produce were about ten people, all trying to negotiate a place to sit. So precarious was their situation, that it would only have taken a sharp bend on an icy mountain road to send them flying out into the valley below.

This was the potential destiny of my dear parents-in-law, and I was filled with dread as they clambered up on top of the pile. I handed Annay her prayer scarf, placing it over her head as she boarded, and gave Rhanjer's monk son, Tinlee, who was accompanying them, another scarf for good luck. It was his first trip to his capital and I hoped he would get there. Suddenly, as the truck began to grind towards the road, Tsedup jumped up on top and pleaded with his father to take the bus instead. 'Drucker, drucker. It's no problem,' cried his father and Tsedup was forced to throw himself clear, as they disappeared into the dark. I whimpered quietly to myself as I watched the lights of the truck swing out of sight. Was this the last time I would see them? We walked back to the house and went to bed. Later we heard that the truck's wheel had broken on the Wild Yak range, not three miles from the house, and they had taken the bus after all. Relieved, we returned to the tents.

The next day the move was on. True nomadic spirit prevailed, but with no yaks this time. Technology had made life easier for the nomads and today a truck would do nicely instead. We got up early and began to take down the black tent. Sirmo unstitched the sides and we dismantled the enormous length of heavy fabric. Our hands were black, as it was covered in soot from the fire, and I was impressed to see how small a shape it could be folded into. Our home now sat on the grass, the size of a cardboard box. The day was chaotic: the truck got stuck in the mud and overturned when Tsedo was trying to tow Rhanjer's decrepit car so he had to fetch cable from the town to pull it out. We girls sat around among the sacks with the children and scrabbling puppies – the bitch had given birth to three – surrounded by mountains of ephemera, giggling and joking to pass the time. We waited till late afternoon around the lonely clay stove in the middle of the grassland, drinking tea and eating tsampa, the last of the tribe to go. There was no tent around us, just chilled autumn air and vast space. It had a surreal feel about it. Then Tsedo returned, cursing, in the truck and we heaved everything into the back. We were so overloaded that I was afraid the vehicle would keel over again, but we went on our way, a family on the move in the evening sunlight. We reached the house and unpacked, throwing the sacks on to the ground unceremoniously and, exhausted, piled into Annay Urgin's clay house next door for momos.

After that, life took on a singularly domestic air. As it was the first year that the tribe had lived in the winter houses, we still had plenty of jobs to do: painting window-frames, sewing curtains, building a house for the dung and another to store the meat, fixing gates on the cattle corrals and constructing a dung wall at the front of the house. It was less strenuous work for the women in comparison to their tasks in the grassland and, these days, I noted that they were more content to be indoors than the men. Soon the milking would stop altogether, and as they completed each household job, there would be less and less to do. Everything was slowing down to a few undemanding tasks. It was like hibernation. However, Tsedo, who had enjoyed a leisurely lifestyle in the grassland that summer, said that he would like to blow up the house and erect the tent again, since he was in charge of DIY. There was no pleasing some people.

One day Sirmo and I were sent to town to run errands for Shermo Donker. Young Dolma accompanied us, and when we had done the shopping we all retired to Annay and Amnye's house to roast barley. Since they were in Lhasa, we had the place to ourselves. Tsampa, which was made from barley, was an essential part of their diet and it was our responsibility to prepare it and bring back fresh stores to the winter house. We heaved out the old sacks from behind the cloth at the back of the house. It had been so long since they were opened that the fabric had rotted into a mesh. We had to force open the mouth of each bag with a wooden cosh. I watched as they tossed the raw barley grains on to some sand which had been heated in a pan over the fire. After a few seconds, the kernels popped open without burning, since the sand had diffused the heat. Then they sieved out the sand, poured the barley into another sack and the sand back into the pan. By the time they had finished, we were all smudged with smoke.

That night we drank some beer that Tsedup had dropped off for us and ate fried momos from a tin pot. They plaited my hair, Amdo style, in two braids. Then we lay in a row on the platform of hay and wood, singing songs before falling asleep.

The next day we took the roasted barley to town for grinding. Nowadays it was done in an electric machine, but in the old days they had used a hand mill of two flat round stones. The nomads were fond of labour-saving devices. In the late afternoon, Sirmo and I walked back to the house through the thick snow. When we arrived it was locked and our neighbour, Annay Pughlo, who kept the key, was out. Annay Gee Gee asked us in and we sat in her house to wait, watching the snow fall and darkness descend. When the blinding white of the window-pane had turned to black, we realised Annay Pughlo wasn't coming back. We would have to stay the night with our neighbour. Annay Gee Gee prepared us a meal, spread sheepskins on the dusty brick floor and wrapped us up in our tsarers. I lay next to the clay fire and listened to her tiny granddaughter, Tselo, chattering away. It was cosy. The walls of the house were covered in Chinese newspaper and a picture of Mao reclining in a wicker chair on a hilltop, smoking nonchalantly. As we fell asleep, Annay Gee Gee turned the prayer wheel and a small bell tinkled.

In the morning we washed and Annay took a tiny pot from the cupboard and put cream on her face. She lit a fire and we ate tanthuk from the night before. I watched as she brushed her long hair and wove it into two fine plaits, then hung her earrings over the top of her head. The snow was still falling steadily and silently outside. The blank air had erased our view of the town. Annay Gee Gee fed Tselo from a small wooden bowl, and she sipped the warm milk gently in the dusky, dim light cast through the fogged panes of glass in the window. An expressive child, Tselo seemed older than her years. She was dressed in home-made dungarees, patched and stained: big padded pink trousers with a slit cut in the bottom for her to go to the loo. She stood holding the door open by a string, smiling at me, and I could see the snow thick and deep in the yard outside beyond the stone step. Then she closed the door behind her to go and visit the poor kitten that was tied up outside, crying in the snow. Sirmo spoke to Annay Gee Gee for hours as we sewed and waited. I could hear Annay Gee Gee telling her she was getting old. She should find a husband. Time was running out.

I didn't realise then that soon things would never be the same again.

Thirteen. A Family Affaire

The strangest night of all began with pancakes. It was a bit easier to manoeuvre now that we were in a house, so I had mixed up some batter and was busy making them for Dickir Ziggy, Sanjay, Gorbo and Shermo Donker. It was already dark. The yaks and sheep were safely in their corral, the evening's tasks were finished. Tsedup and Tsedo were away, Dickir Che was at her grandmother's and Sirmo was staying next door with Dolma in the Kambo household, as Annay Urgin was in town. We were a skeleton crew. I squirted mandarin juice and heaped sugar on top of the fried batter, as they smacked their lips in anticipation. Such was their new- found lust for this English treat that two hours later I was still ladling the thick mixture into the pan when Dolma appeared. I thought that she and Sirmo might have come over and joined in our feast, but concluded that they were probably too preoccupied with the evening's impending hornig. Two girls alone in a house was a perfect opportunity for young horsemen wandering the night and they knew it. Dolma hadn't come for pancakes, she had come to ask Shermo Donker something and, after some suspicious whispering, the two left the house.

The children and I finished eating then sat and played cards together. An hour passed and still Shermo Donker had not returned. I sensed that something odd was going on. Then, just as I was getting