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Chief Monk Lobsang leaves the Sarnai Monastery at twilight sans parting ceremony or retinue. It isn’t a joyous occasion to require as much. Climbing down the ancient, worn-out ladder that connected the Sarnai Monastery to Mang Yul strains his old bones, but he carries on.

He chooses to not traverse through the deadwood of the Baika Forest, but rather skirt around it, evading the shrine of the tutelary deities of the forest – 30 smooth stones smeared with red ochre and cordoned off with ropes – heading for the small pastoral village of Bayarma, south of the capital. The new capital, Lobsang corrects himself.

The Baika Forest, a boundless land of petrified plum trees that had once flourished – slumbering softwood burgeoning with tender shoots before the wretched hoarfrost settled, taking any warmth from its soul, split the cold desert nation of Mang Yul in two; a glacial north of unscalable summits of the Shiagara and its perilous passes that held ancient secrets, and a merciless salted patina over the deadland – both just as brutal as the other. The land was as vast and sparse as its populace, living in hamlets and villages in clusters near the mighty rivers Chesa and...

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