It thaws the bones and raises the spirit after a chill night spent in a tent with a stubbornly malfunctioning zipper, and thus it is tempting—so very tempting—to sprawl out by the river and indulge in a warm post breakfast snooze. But if we wait too long and let the sun get too high in the sky, we won’t be able to cross the mountains today. By early afternoon, the snow in the passes will have softened too much, and will no longer be able to bear the camels’ weight. 

So we rouse ourselves and rouse them. 

I finish my cup of salty milk tea, chewing my way through the clumps of millet that  linger at the bottom. I pocket the remnants of the hard, wonderfully sour aaruul that we bought yesterday from a Tuvan family in an adjacent valley. Shamanists with  satellite internet. They had politely refused to part ways with any of their homemade vodka, which, considering how weary we had been by the time we made camp, had probably been a blessing in disguise. I am very glad that I don’t have to race the sun with a pounding headache. 

A herd of yak, about a dozen strong, pass us as we make our way up into the foothills. These sturdy vagabonds are domesticated—possibly even belonging to that family an entire valley behind us—and are allowed to roam the countryside freely until their owners come looking for them. There is always a risk of losing some to greener pastures or livestock rustlers or wolves, but at least as far as the latter are concerned,  yak are well-equipped to offer a rebuttal. Camels, although possessed of a towering frame that dwarfs both yak and wolf alike, have a soft underbelly that can be ripped open by an opportunistic pair of fangs. Meanwhile, a wolf attempting the same manoeuvre on a yak will find its target frustratingly concealed behind a dense shield  wall of tangled fur. 

As the herd passes, I notice a lone straggler tailing them from a distance. His left  foreleg has been shattered somehow—a bad fall, perhaps?—and is dangling beneath him, utterly useless. He cannot hope to match the pace of his healthy kin, and the distance between him and the herd steadily increases. But he is trying. He’s trying so hard. 

I stop and watch him from afar. I tell myself there’s nothing I can do. The nearest town is days away, and I cannot even remember if there was a vet there. The residents of the valleys place immense value on their animals—they live and die by how well they can maintain their herds—but they are pragmatic. If I were to suggest rerouting us all the way back to the beginning of our journey in the hopes of rescuing a doomed yak, they would think me mad. 

If I had a gun, or a knife, I might have considered using it. But I don’t, so I can’t. 

He bleats pitifully at the rest of the herd as he falls even further behind. Not a single one of them looks back. 

*

We continue up the mountain to where the world turns white and blue. The camels  occasionally stop for no reason other than the fact that they can. Every time this happens, one of the drivers dismounts and remonstrates with the chief troublemaker.  There are traditional songs that herders use to coax a mother camel to bond with her newborn calf; songs typically performed at dusk with the last embers of the day smouldering on the horizon; songs of soaring melody and subtle emotion. The ritual  for encouraging a stubborn camel to move, in contrast, is much more simple—an explosive Chuu! sometimes coupled with a light slap on the flanks. 

Their gait scarcely changes as they reach the deep snow. They are remarkably graceful. Several nights ago, as I sat by my tent and watched the stars, I noticed our  camels gliding off into the darkness with some unknowable purpose, their long legs casting spiderlike moon-shadows on a nearby hill. They are no less silent now. I, on  the other hand, am the very image of oafish exertion as I lumber through the knee high drift trying to keep pace with them. 

There is more milk tea waiting on the other side. I mix in a lump of butter, and look at the valleys stretching off ahead of us. Not far beyond them is the mammoth steppe, one of the last remnants of the way the world looked when we were young. 

*

The camels melt into the darkness again, gone to speak with the ghosts of petroglyphs. I triumph over the zipper and wrap myself in the thin veneer of civilization.