Amnye and the Yeti
A Journey with Tibetan Nomads into Exile
Amnye and the Yeti
I once lived with nomads on the Chang Thang plain which traverses Western Tibet (Nga Ri) over into Ladakh, ancient pasturelands for nomadic herds. I’d like to share a story I wrote that is about Amnye, the grandfather of a family I know in Choglamsar, Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India, on the Tibetan border.
I first met Amnye with his grandson, Gyalphur who was working for an environmental organisation in Ladakh, which helped assist nomads move from pastoral to settled life.
"They don't like it," he said. "Most of all, my Amnye."
His Amnye had been a nomad in his first years in exile, until circumstances brought him to the Tibetan refugee camp in Choglamsar, Ladakh, where he had to settle.
"My Amnye exchanged his yak-hair tent for concrete walls. And thousands of yak, sheep, horses and goats for three Indian cows. He lives in a congested refugee camp, but really he wants to be back in those pasturelands."
Amnye had left Tibet as a wealthy nomad in the trail of the Dalai Lama in 1959, and in a dark room in the back of their house in the refugee camp in Ladakh, Amnye had told Gyalphur all about his homeland, Nga-ri, in western Tibet.
"His spirit has always been in Tibet. He is now counting the last days of his life on the beads of his rosary. Every day he sits there, with his cats, turning his prayer wheel. But there is no time left."
Gyalphur had been born in the nethers of the Chang Thang, the nomadic pastures in Ladkah, on the third day of the sixth month of the Water Horse year he said, but nobody in his family could remember. He burst out from his mother's legs into a pile of ashes outside the rebo, a black yak hair tent. But Gyalphur would never be a nomad. Amnye said it was time to settle: they left the nomadic camp, and settled in Ladakh. Gyalphur got a good education at the Tibetan Children's Village School, and went on to read history in Delhi University. By the time he graduated, he would know more about World War Two than the history of Tibet.
"Do you want to go to Tibet?"
"Maybe. Yes, maybe."
There was a restlessness in him. Half nomad, half graduate of the imperial, western world. He wanted to translate for documentaries, and make films, he said. He also wanted to go back to Chang Thang, and find his natural father who was still a nomad. Gyalphur had a foot in both worlds, and was not fully a part of either.
Amnye told me many tales, the one about the mi-drong, the man-eating yeti, stayed with me for years. I made this story into fiction. Amnye’s great grandchildren and grandaughter live in Dublin. This story was first published in 2018 in Tales from the Forest Journal and the Bray Arts Journal.
The story of meeting them is an extract from my travelogue about Tibetans in Exile, first published by Pilgrims BOoks, Varanasi and L.A., in 2007. It was called ‘Pema and the Yak’.
To find the book, try here or for an extract read here for reviews read here. A revised edition of the book will be released on Amazon Kindle, published by Seagull Press, this summer.
Watch this space…
AMNYE AND THE YETI
The Yeti came in the moonlight, after the monks had blown their horns for evening prayers and Amnye had taken the Yak to the pastures below the temple. Momo, his wife, gave him his dinner when he came back.
“If the Abbot asks for more tax, I’ll throw my dinner at him.” she said, as the children slurped soup around the stove. The dogs were silent.
“Don’t desecrate the clergy.” said Amnye, but inside he agreed with her.
That night, the stars gleamed like the jewels of the Gods but a terrible thing happened. A howling whistle like a ghost’s lament came up from the pastures. Amnye sat up with his gun and stood at the door and he saw every yak in the pasture dead. Still, black shadows under the moon.
“The Yeti!” he cried, as Momo came to his side, and the dogs growled like thunder. Amnye saw the black figure facing him, wheeling his arm with a yak pat on his head. Amnye knew who he was, pretending to be a man, calling him into the pasture so he could choke him to death.
“Demon! Murderer!” said Momo, spitting on the ground. The children woke up and huddled around them, staring at the dead yak and at the huge mi drong tearing up the hill, his whistles howling in the the wind.
Amnye packed a bag of tsampa flour, slung it on his back with his rifle.
“Don’t go.” begged Momo, “He will take you as well!”
The little ones tugged at their Pala’s thick chuba coat, but Amnye would stop at nothing, after this third attack the yeti had made on the village. In the morning, the monks prayed for Amnye and the Abbot did not ask for tax. They said they understood if he had to kill. They had seen such things since the Han soldiers had marched into their land.
Amnye’s boots crunched over the crumbling rocks on the pass, and the white peak of the Goddess mountain gleamed like a knife under the moon . Amnye knew the crack in the mountain where the yeti lived, and where he had taken his cousin’s daughters three years before.
Amnye stopped at the creak for his tsampa, and lit a small fire in the crevice, A yeti knew fire. He would smell the smoke but Amnye was ready. He clutched his rifle, the one he’d had since the sky fell down and the wolves howled on the Goddess Mountain. Since the Han came. The sky had never risen again, and all Amnye had known was misfortune. Now, twenty yak were dead and his family would starve in the winter. With all his thoughts of war and enemies, a shadow fell over him.
“The mi-drong is a sentient being. do not take your gun to the cave. He will lead you to the right path.”
Amnye bowed to the lama, who stood before him. But inside, he was angry. The lama had grey hair in a knot and a grey beard draped to his waist and his chest was shiny and strong.
“How am I to avenge the murder of my herd? And the two women robbed?”
“Take your prayer wheel.” said the lama, and vanished into the shadows. Amnye did not have his prayer wheel. He had his rifle. In the morning, he saw the eagle in the sky and it swooped down and scratched his bushy hair.
“Ah, ah! Why do you threaten me when I am right!? The Goddess would not afflict me like this!”
The eagle turned and stared in to his eyes, hovering right in front of him on the path.
“You should listen to the lama! Retreat! Bring only your prayer beads, old man…” he swooped away, high in the sky, and danced around the Goddess’s peak.
Amnye reached the peak, and icy winds bit his cheeks, and his tsampa was empty. He saw the Yeti, mocking him, with a yak pat on his head, wheeling his arm around and whistling terribly. Amnye pulled his rifle up, and aimed at the heart, as the Yeti thundered towards him, his sharp white teeth gleaming in the sun, his hairy body dull and thick, his shoulders no man had the back to carry. He slung Amnye over the hairy shoulder, like a piece of meat. Like every other victim, he was carried into the cave of the Goddess mountain.
Amnye woke in the dark. His cousin’s two sisters were making yak soup on the fire.
“This is where you have been? Why don’t you escape?”
“Our life is good here, Amnye.”
Their minds have been made simple by that monster, Amnye thought. One of them, the salt trader’s girl, was pregnant. It was unimaginable. Amnye searched for his rifle. It was gone. Instead, in his sack, he found his prayer wheel and his prayer beads. He had not packed them, but there they were. He swung his prayer wheel, around and prayed for peace. He prayed for his life, and for the lives of his cousins’ sisters, and the lives of the people in his family, and for the people in the village, and the yak to be reborn in De Wa Chen, the Western Paradise. He prayed for the end of the wrath of the Yeti.
But a gleaming white figure sailed in through the crack of the cave, tall and shimmering, with silken black hair and eyes as deep as the Turquoise lakes. Her body was slender and wispy…the Goddess of the Mountain.
“Welcome,” she said, “to the mountain. We knew you would come.” she swirled around, as the Yeti came in. “Here you will stay with us, and pray with us.”
Amnye’s mother had always said he should never have been a yak herder. He had the mark of a lama on his ears, long and soft for listening to the sorrows of lost souls. His eyes filled with tears as the Goddess showed him his family climbing up the pathway to give him alms, a year after his capture. Amnye had always known, but he had forgotten. Pilgrims from far, far away came to the Goddess Mountain to seek advice from the wise sage Amnye, whose wisdom was as sharp as an eagle, whose strength was as mighty as the Yeti. His family was blessed with a new herd of yak, and the Abbot suspended taxes. The Yeti served him, cooked for him and cleaned his cave and was even seen sitting with Amnye, spinning his prayer wheel under the snows of the Goddess mountain…
FIN
To read more about Amnye, you can download That Time I got Lost in Shambhala, soon to be published by Seagull Press on Amazon Kindle. ‘Pema and the Yak was first published by Pilgrims Books in 2007. https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Shambhala-Siofra-ODonovan-ebook/dp/B00Z83VDD2
Thanks Siofra. Incredible.
Brilliant Siofra, we never talked about it, but my wife and I were there in Ladack, Varanasi, throughout India, Nepal at exactly the same time, brought back memories . Great writing, shine in, the best, Phoeagdor.