Smells Like Yak

There's a funny sweet smell in the van, especially when we turn on the heater, in winter. We know that smell; it's antifreeze. We've had leaks before. When we finally have a chance to get it looked at, it turns out there's a pernicious leak into the inside of the van, right under the driver's feet. Don the Mechanic patches it up for us.

Next time I ride in the van, it doesn't smell like antifreeze anymore. It smells a bit like mechanic. But it's a little bit different. I sniff again. "It smells like yak," I say. 

My husband laughs, "You are the only person I know who would actually know what yak smells like!"

Once when I was pretty little -- little enough so I can just barely remember it -- my family went on a trek to Jomsom. I was so little they had hired a coolie just to carry me, in a basket on his back. One day we came to a wide-open, barren plain, high in the mountains, that was strewn with round black rocks. I remember my coolie put my basket down and cracked a rock open for me, and inside was a fossil of a curled up sea creature. Even at that young age, I was pretty impressed. We were high in the Himalaya in a dry plateau! I still have that fossil somewhere.

In my memory, I walked across the high plain without my coolie. The wind was so strong my mom and I leaned into it steeply while we walked. On the far side there was an old plane wreck, perched at an odd angle, empty windows leering hauntingly, just begging to be explored.

As we climbed the gentle slope out of that flat valley, we passed a yak train loaded with wares to trade or sell in far away places. The yak drivers asked, "Kahaa jaane ho?" Where are you going? It's the polite greeting on a trail in the Himalaya. I remember being given some cubes of yak cheese to suck on. The locals ate the cheese dry and hard, so that they could carry it with them for days and savor the flavors and nutrition.

That night, in my memory, we stopped at a village home to spend the night. Our family sat in the dark kitchen around the cozy cooking fire with the family whose home it was, while our coolies chatted in the shadowy corners. Behind them, the family's yaks munched solemnly and peacefully near the manger.

I don't know why the van smelled like that. We don't have to worry about antifreeze anymore though, because now we drive all-electric.