-1 to Losar, the Tibetan New Year

The Losar is the Tibetan New Year which this year will begin on 16 February. There are many traditions, among them those linked to food.

The 30th of the Tibetan year is called Namkhang.

In the morning, on waking, people drink the Changkhol, an alcoholic drink made from cereals, and eat aged cheese (Chura).

On this day the dishes for the first day of Losar are prepared, such as the Dhoma Desey (a sweet rice prepared with butter, chura and dhoma – small tubers) which will be eaten the next morning for breakfast; other dishes are the gora, a type of fried bread similar to the paklep used by sedentary populations; the pholok, a dough with meat and fat that is roasted on the fire; various types of biscuits (khase) and dried fruit; the tsökor, small discs of dough mixed with yoghurt, flattened and with a hole in the middle, cooked in butter; the dzona, or “nose of the dzo”, a flour dough shaped like the nose of a dzo (animals bred from the crossing of a yak and a cow) boiled in water and then mixed with crumbled dry cheese and butter.

Various types of soups can also be prepared, such as the gyenlog, a soup of dough balls filled with meat and cooked in broth; the dreshathuk, a rice broth in which a lot of meat is cooked.