Yak poop

On our road trip through Tibet, we passed between beautiful rocky mountains, past fields of barley. A few times we stopped at a farming village to get out & stretch our legs. The houses were simple square structures of one or two storeys, with little adornment except for brightly painted decorations above the windows & doors.

In the middle of the day, when we stopped at these villages, there was no one in sight - as if the towns had been abandoned. But later as we were driving past the barley fields, we saw whole families bent over among the stalks, wielding sharp scythes and stacking the cut grain into neat little teepees.

Several of the houses had disks of yak dung drying on the outer walls. At first, I thought it might be part of the building materials - a resourceful way to keep the stones together. But our guide told us that Tibetans use the dried yak dung cakes as fuel in the winter time.