From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Bob Carlson, and this is Unfictional.

Unfictional is a program of stories and original documentaries from KCRW's independent producer project.

And last fall, producer Stephanie Geier Stevens took a trip to a place very far from home.

The mountains are so vast.

The plains are so wide. It feels like you're in the middle of the sky.

She wanted to see for herself this area of southern Tibet called the calm region

K-H-A-M now mostly part of Chinghi province of China.

For thousands of years the families there have been nomads.

So where I actually went to was their winter camp, which consists of stone houses that are built into a village.

That was at about 11,000 feet. In the summer they'll move up to 15,000 feet and they live in

Yachare tents. Although I was incredibly odd in their eyes and pretty much everything I did. They were

beautifully warm and did whatever they could to take care of me. And at the center of

the Tibetan nomad way of life is the Yack.

I love Yacks.

Yacks are like small cows, but covered with long, mostly black fur. I think if you actually took all the hair off a yuck, I don't

know that there would be much left at all. Their hair is so thick and long. Mostly they

use the yaks for milk, which they turn into yogurt rather than butter and they make a black wool out of the yach hair.

The dung is their fuel and it's a really efficient source of fuel. It burns very hot. It

burns up very fast, but they've got plenty of it. There's a pressure on

nomads to become more part of the money economy.

You see the nomad culture beginning to lose its fabric.

The more people that step out of a traditional culture, the more

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