Where open fields serve as facilities

After hours without seeing a trace of humankind, we discover an upside down car next to another with a crumpled snout. There's obviously been an accident so we stop, but the man and woman standing on the grassland say there's no need. So we drive on.

"We always help others," explains Tseringbum, the English teacher at our destination, the herding community of 2,000 nomads that is Yege township in Qinghai province's Yushu prefecture.

I sleep in Tseringbum's prayer room, swaddled in yak skins, during my week on the Tibetan Plateau. There are no spare tents since last year's earthquake.