Tibetan Yaks

Tibetan life still revolves around the yak, which the people have herded and placed at the center of their culture for at least two thousand years. Tibetans are warmed by yak-dung fires and lit by yak-butter lamps; they eat yak meat and yak blood, butter, cheese, and yoghurt; they use yaks for transport and weave clothing, blankets, shelters, and even boats out of yak hair. Their staple dish is tsampa, made of salted tea pounded together with yak butter, to which toasted barley flour is added and mixed by hand before eating. The dependence in so many ways upon their particular animal herd is typical of pastoralists, the original; buttercaters; the world over.

Yaks evolved in the high country in the Himalaya Mountains of Asia. The native people in many Asian areas are totally dependent on their yak herd to support their livelihood. They use the long hairs for rope, etc. The soft underdown which sheds annually is spun into cloth or felted to make other products such as their yurts, the native huts or houses.

The milk which is extremely rich in butterfat, around 6% to 7%, is easy to make into butter, cheese, etc. The meat is tasty, tender and very lean. Because yaks evolved in a high, cold climate, their fat is stored on the outside of the cacass so it can easily be trimmed off. Preliminary tests show fat content around 7% to 12%, cholesterol under 50. There is currently more extensive testing underway at Texas A&M with the results to be published this summer.
In the city, yak butter has an important use in ceremonies, as a fuel for butter lamps. In particular, the 15th day of the first month is a the high point of the Great Prayer Festival (Smom-lam), and the day of the fabulous "Butter lamp day." This festival was started by Tsong kha-pa in the first Smom-lam in 1409. In his dream, all beautiful flowers and trees appeared in front of Buddha. He commissioned monks to make flowers and trees with colored butter.
Tibetan monks have made intricate, colored butter sculptures as part of a tradition that is as old as Buddhism. In Lhasa, they continue to carve fantastic flowers, animals, birds and plants for December’s Butter Lamp Festival, and place them on a street lit with hundreds of lamps that burn butter. One sculpture takes up to six months to complete, as it is part of the path to enlightenment, upon which the monks create a positive collective world karma to overcome epidemics, hunger, and war.