A Tibetan family reunion or an outdoor gathering of nomad friends will include a picnic, but people soon get tired of eating and want to amuse themselves. One possibility is to join a group of people in contests of strength, horsemanship, or running as I described previously. But if you have just one or two friends who wish to have fun, there are other games for just two people.
A Digression about Large Tents (and What Goes on Inside of Them)
To digress for a moment, a lot of this playing around occurs at night outside of the view of cameras, so my illustrations here are from a Tibetan gathering earlier in the day, particularly of activities in and around a large tent where meetings, music and eating occurred.
A Big Tent
Tents like this are white from the outside, but inside they have a pink cast due to their colorful interior fabric.
Watching Entertainers inside the Tent
The audience sat on carpets and enjoyed various refreshments — candies, fried bread, fruit, etc — while watching musical and dance performances and hearing from various speakers, in this case describing the virtues of the extended family that they all belonged to.
Musician Performing in the Tent
Individual Games
There are relay races, rock throwing and other competitions that take place during the day and gatherings at night where young people dance together in a circle. (This video provides some sense of that except that one needs to imagine the dancing at night around a fire or in front of the headlights of parked cars, like we enjoyed it).
Besides these activities, individuals can challenge one another to various games and tests of strength and agility. There are pushing games: 1) hopping on one foot (hold your other foot to do that) and try to push your opponent over; or 2) stand about two feet apart from someone with your legs together, straight and attempt to push them over.
And there are tests of strength where two opponents get on all fours and face each other like angry yaks. The opponents touch their heads together and attempt to push each other backward, which can be painful if one’s opponent has a hard head! In a variation on this, which is probably the most amusing game to watch, two players get on all fours facing the opposite direction, and a long rope — tied so that it makes a circle — is put around their necks like yaks yoked to a wagon. The two yaks pull in opposite directions in a contest of strength. This is particularly funny because the rope passes through the players’ legs, constricting their lower extremities in some cases. Truly some games are best as spectator sports.
- Eric C. Rath
