On the way down the mountain, I stop outside Old Sonam’s yard in the upper village. In sooty rags and rough-spun boots, wearing the coral-coloured beads of her lost girlhood, Sonam is sitting legs straight out in the dry dung, weaving a blanket on a crazy handloom rigged to rocks and sticks, bracing the whole with old twine soles pushed stiff against a stone. Her wool has a handsome and delicate pattern, for there is design in the eye of this old wild one. I admire her sudden grin, strong back, and grimy hide indifferent to the cold.
