A herder leads a horse in front of his family's summer camp on the grasslands surrounding Yege township in Qumalai; yakdung collector Lhamao lives in an adobe hovel in Yege. Photos By Eriknilsson / China Daily

Expeditions to China's wild, wild West, beyond realms tourists trod, divulge the secrets of an extreme expanse that's equal parts tribulation and majesty. Only the adventurous need apply

Yaks buck.

I didn't know that before mounting one.

I was getting a crash course - literally - to the guffaws of my nomadic Tibetan herder hosts.

I clasped fistfuls of wool as tightly as I could and teetered as I tried to crawl atop the writhing beast's back.

To add to the yuks of me riding a yak, my hosts had dressed me in traditional Tibetan attire.

Moments before, my host family's patriarch, 54-year-old Ahzhub, had blasted up the mountainside at lightening speed atop another bolting bovid, with a thunder of hooves.

More locals are buying motorcycles and cars. But many still ride horses and yaks to cross the crumpled crags to their camps, far from any road.

From the creature's back, I surveyed crinkled topography, fleeced with grass, freckled with prairie flowers and studded with livestock. The sunset painted iridescent water ribbons that fluttered across the terrain.

Less enrapturing were the pyramid of yak dung - used for heating and cooking - crowned with a sheep skull, and the snarling mastiff, choking against his chain in fury at my presence.

Locals jokingly call the manure "Tibetan coal". They heap hunks of flammable feces into walls around tents or adobe hovels.

I'd been shooting a "Tibetan gun" - a slingshot hand-woven from yak wool, used to direct herds - moments before boarding the yak - a "Tibetan all-terrain vehicle".

Ahzhub's mountainside shelter is like Yege's other nomads' - haloed by yaks and an outer orbit of guard mastiffs. The canines are the home-security system, especially when the family is out to pasture.