The dish turned out to be delicious, something like an extremely crunchy version of Rice Krispies. I was envisioning a dream of a dish, a feather-light dumpling or a sweet ambrosia whose name alone could carry a trendy dining establishment. Tsampa, we discovered, was in fact a ball of raw barley flour mixed with hot water and yak butter. We were supposed to take a bite out of the ball, which was the approximate size and weight of a shot put, then wash it down with a gulp of hot water. Odzer offered to add some yak butter to our water, but we demurred.
Tibetan monk eat.
Young monks, eight years old or so, kept peering into the window to catch a glimpse of the foreigners, or perhaps to see someone act like they were enjoying eating tsampa. If we caught them looking, they giggled and ran away. We chatted haltingly with Odzer, who frequently left the room when he couldn't find the word he wanted, and then re-entered after a brief absence so we could restart the conversation at another less sticky point. His absences also gave us a chance to store uneaten chunks of tsampa in our pockets. At last the rice appeared, along with a plate of tofu and some unfamiliar mixed vegetables, including a fleshy, zucchini-like gourd and several leafy greens.