An overnight stay at Namtso, 195km north of Lhasa, has become a popular trip in recent years. With a surface area of 1,940 square kilometers ( 750 square miles), the sacred lake is the second biggest salt lake in China ( after Koko Nor, or Qinghai Hu). A nomad, moving steadily, needs 18 days to circle it. This part is its narrow eastern tip. The road descends rapidly to the plain where it continues over the grassland, fording shallow streams. Mt. Nyanchen Tanglha's white head soars 7,088 meters ( 23,249 feet) in the west, and the tin roofs of Namtso Qu, a tiny county station, can be seen near the foothills far off to the east.

To reach the lake's edge, a four-wheel-drive vehicle must leave the track and make its own way. Several kilometers west, a group of isolated hills extends into the lake.

Water birds skim the water and, in June, hundreds of wild geese nest close off shore on bands of reeds. Color abounds everywhere, in tiny jewel-like flowers underfoot and in distant mountain rocks. To take a walk and experience the immense distances, the timelessness and the total silence of the plateau is perhaps to understand the nomads' deep lover this land.