A day in Nirru

To reach Nirru you keep going towards Pudacuo, deeper into the mountains. At the edge of the village, the first thing you hear is the Nirru river.

Nirru lies at the heart of the Three Parallel Rivers, where the Jinsha, the Lancang and the Nu run side by side southward through the mountains. Mountains surround the village, and its timber houses are scattered along the valley.

People here hold an old faith. They revere the mountains, the lakes and the pastures, and the Bön tradition lives on in their days alongside Tibetan Buddhism. I cannot always tell one from the other; I only see their respect for a mountain or a river.

The day follows the sun. In the morning the herds are let out; by day the barley is cut and the straw dried; at dusk the cattle and sheep walk home along the lane and smoke rises from the chimneys. In winter, after snow, tractors haul logs slowly along the mountain road, and when a family builds a house the neighbours come to raise the beams.

Each time I come back from Nirru, I feel that the slower life of the valley has always been lived here, by someone.