October 3: After a long day of riding horses and basking in the sun, we rode up a hill and arrived at a yurt where we would be staying for two nights. Half of the yurt was the kitchen with a pile of dried yak dung in one corner. The other half of the yurt was used as the living room, eating area, and bedroom. It was a big empty floor space covered with a canvas that could be changed according to need.
They had a solar panel on top of the roof, a battery, and a light bulb. Even nomadic yak herders have to have have a way to charge their cell phones.
The were no wells. The mother had to walk down the hill to the somewhat empty river and haul water back up, not on her head but strapped with a cord to her back while holding two smaller containers in both hands. There were no pit latrines, just vast grassland.
In the unheated tent, we were tightly bound into sleeping bags and heavy blankets weighed our bodies down. I could not move. It wasn't the hard floor that was difficult, but the constricted prison of a bed I was in. I felt like I had been swallowed by a snake and couldn't escape. Seven us filled the empty space and we looked like a can of sardines, all packed in neatly.
One of my travel companions took a video of my fall off a horse and posted it to youtube. | 
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