Ethical, Sustainable Luxury from Tibetan Plateau. Stories from Norlha

Animals and Surroundings

Natural Shades

Herds of Yak are visible from miles away, black dots on green or yellow pasture. Up close, they appear mostly dark brown, with some lighter ani...

Animals and Surroundings

The Norlha Atelier stands at the entrance of Ritoma village, after the basketball court and before the spread of winter houses and the sprawlin...

Animals and Surroundings

Glistening, cold, slippery, stark and pitiless, ice is an integral part of winter. Ice on the Plateau is never very far away; in late august, i...

Animals and Surroundings

Clouds roll over the Plateau bringing rain and snow. In summer or early fall, when the air is humid, they often lie low creating a blanket of f...

Animals and Surroundings

Tibet is sometimes called The Land of Snows, though not all areas of the Plateau see regular snowfall. In Ritoma, winters are too cold for snow...

Animals and Surroundings

Noisy and boisterous, Wind on the Tibetan Plateau animates the multitude of prayer flags, transporting with it the luck-bringing wind horse thr...

Animals and Surroundings

Today, people tend to forget how much we, homo sapiens, have always moved from one place to another. Migration, which happened ‘en masse’ for m...

Animals and Surroundings

Harvest in a nomadic area like Ritoma is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the old days, there were less animals in more plentiful pasture, ga...

Animals and Surroundings

The pasture remains a bright shade of parrot green, though the tips of long grass left to grow wild in the autumn pasture turn gold at the tips...

Animals and Surroundings

When Dechen and her brother Genam set off to Amdo to buy yak wool in the summer of 2005, they had no idea what they were getting into, and neit...

Animals and Surroundings

Norlha textiles were created from the union of precious khullu and the skilled hands of local artisans. Together, they wove and spun a way of l...

Animals and Surroundings

The Environment There are no trees in Ritoma. At first I thought it was due to the altitude, though the monastery’s pine grove planted some thi...