🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Tibetans

Tibetans live on a high plateau where farming is possible only in the valleys, while nomadic herders — the drokpa — roam the vast pastures. The main dairy animal is the yak: its milk is rich and thick, although the female gives little of it.

The best-known drink is butter tea: strong tea is churned in a wooden churn with yak butter and salt. It is drunk many times a day and gives warmth and energy in the cold. It is mixed with tsampa — flour made from roasted barley. Skimmed milk is made into curd, which is dried into chhurpi, a hard cheese that keeps for a long time. Yogurt is popular too; Lhasa has the Shoton festival — the “yogurt festival”.

Yak butter is also used in Buddhist rituals: temple lamps burn it, and sculptures for festivals are moulded from coloured butter.