In Tibet, the more cow dung the wall of a house is covered with, the richer it is, because there are many cattle.
When coming to Tibet, many tourists are surprised to see that the walls of households here are covered with a lot of cow dung, covered in large patches. For people from other places, this is very difficult to understand. Because usually, cow dung is abundant in rural areas, used as fertilizer for plants and has no other special uses.
Houses filled with dried cow dung in Tibet. (Photo: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr).
Most of the people here live by grazing cattle. Each family can raise a lot of yaks and goats – their most valuable assets. Therefore, the more manure the house covers, the more cattle it shows and the richer the owner of the house. Cow dung can be built into goat stables, piled up in the open ground or arranged in different ways as fences around the house.
The value of cow dung is not only a symbol of wealth and prosperity but also has many other special effects. In Tibet, cow dung is also an important fuel . This plateau is located at an altitude of thousands of meters above sea level, so the air is relatively thin, the temperature can drop to -30 degrees Celsius, making it difficult for trees to grow. People cannot cut down trees for firewood like in the delta, so they have to collect cow dung as fuel instead. Due to the low humidity of the air, cow manure left outdoors dries very quickly, and the cow’s food consists of only grass, so the waste will look like dry, combustible grass.
Tibetan girl reveals how to distinguish which house is a moat on the plateau. (Video: @zhouma688/TikTok)
In addition, a strange point about yak cow dung is that it does not have a bad smell when burned. People explain this because yaks drink pure water, eat grass on the savannah and sometimes even eat cordyceps, so their feces have a pleasant smell like dried herbs.
Cow dung is a practical resource for Tibetans, but it is bad for the environment, according to National Geographic . Some recent studies show that burning yak dung in Tibet can generate more than 1,000 tons of black carbon annually. This is believed to be the second leading cause of global warming. The effects of black carbon are particularly acute in the Himalayas, where the climate is warming at a rate three to five times faster than the global trend.