for the love of a yak


this glorious old fellow is ap chuni dorji, composer of the song, 'yak legpai lhadar gawo', an hour-long little ditty about the tragic parting between a yak herder and his beloved yak. this song has been the top of the bhutan hit parade for the last fifty years (until they got satellite tv a year or so ago). it is immortalised on the soundtrack of the film being made by the professionally perfect
dzongar jamyang khyentse rinpoche, who is, apart from being a film-director, the reincarnation of a 19th-century tibetan saint, and one of himalayan buddhism's most revered lamas. their stories, which read like a vertiginous crossing of a rickety rope bridge spanning the middle ages and now with nothing in between, can be found in the bhutan online newspaper Kuensel Online and in this
TIME Asia article.