Yak Yak Yak (or Yakitty Yak)

How about the Ringed Seal to the Inuit? Or the Caribou to the Lapps? Or perhaps Salmon to the First Nations of the Pacific coast? Nope… I can’t think of any other animal as important to a culture as the Yak (Bos grunniens) is to Tibetans.

Please prepare yourself for a ROS = Run On Sentence!

What other animal is your work horse (or work Yak) in your fields – tilling the soil – is your transport, keeps you warm either as a fur blanket or by the burning of its excrement (formed into Yak patties and dried in the sun … often pasted on the sides of houses), keeps you dry at night (Tibetans use Yaks in tent construction), makes shoes and jackets and pants and bags and ropes (Yak leather can be made into ropes), whose bones can be made into tools (from combs to knives), can be used as an insulating refrigerator (the poop again is used for this)...

Tibetan noodles with Yak

and … provides you with a great array of food products:  Yak milk, Yak butter, Yak yoghurt, Yak cheese (often sold in chunks wrapped in Yak intestine) and of course Yak meat!

And the Yak butter is not just the delicious yellow spread to be slathered on a piece of bread or mashed potatoes … Yak butter is also the waxy oil that holds the wick that lights the lamps in monasteries across Tibet.

And… had I been allowed to photograph inside the Potala Palace in Lhasa, I could have shown you the lustrous glow of the palace floor made such by the inclusion of Yak butter in the floor construction (as well as regular polishing no doubt).

And of course … the Yak is the animal symbol of Tibet (like the Kangaroo is to Australia)… and generates tourism dollars when tourists come along who want to have their photo taken on the beast!

My contribution to Tibetan tourism!