THE USEFUL YAK

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22109, 3 June 1937, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE USEFUL YAK

To visit Tibet is easier nowadays than most people realise. Starting from the plains of Bengal, the first part of the journey leads through the great wall of the Himalayas and provides the most magnificent scenery stupendous mountains combined with -semi-tropical forests. On the further side of the mountain wall there is a complete change, all the more impressive for its extraordinary suddenness. There are still mountains to be seen, but they rise in the distance out of the plain and are merely a feature of the landscape, instead of being the whole of it. The ground, no longer coveted with thickets and deep vegetation, is carpeted with beautiful smooth green turf reminiscent of our own down country. And all this change comes about m scarcely more than a few yards of distance. The home-like effect of the green grass is strengthened by the singing of larks overhead. The other animal life, however, is far from home-like. Dotted about the green downs are black, shapeless objects looking rather like gigantic slugs. They are yaks. The yak is very similar in build to the Indian water buffalo, but differs from him in carrying a great shaggy beard and coat of hair, which help to give him a very majestic appearance, but hide the outline of his body and make him look rather shapeless at a distance. Another difference is that the Indian buffalo carries his head up horizontally in line with his neck, while the yak carries his low down. There is a legend to account for this. Buffalo and yak once lived together, but they quarrelled persistently. and the god responsible for such matters decreed that they must for ever live apart; and ever since 'then the buffalo in the Indian plains holds his head up gazmg disconsolately towards his lost brother above while the yak from his lofty tableland looks eoually disconsolately down to his brother below. The yak does as much for the Tibetan as the palm tree does for men in the tropics and indeed probably more.- Not only does it furnish excellent milk and occasionally beef —only occasionally, because yaks are too valuable often to be killed—but it is also an important transport animal, and a large herd of yaks laden with great bales,of wool, when one meets it on the road, is an impressive sight. Then again the yak’s long hair can be woven into warm clothing, blankets, or tent material. Most remarkable of

all over most of treeless Tibet its dried dung provides the only available fuel. In the Cosy little rest houses for travellers on the stages of the main trade route you do not find a coal scuttle by the fireplace, Vit a box full of yak-dung cakes,

and very good heat they give out, too.

To use them for heating alone is, however, a luxury. The ordinary Tibetan can only afford to use them for cooking. To keep himself warm when the weather gets cold, he has to rely on additional garments —layer upon layer of them.