Words and photographs by Chris Schalkx
July 17, 2026

At the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, an artisan textile brand and its relaunched wilderness camp are putting a remote corner of China on the map, while helping local families stay connected to their nomadic roots.

*Left to right:* The Grand Sutra Hall on the main courtyard at Labrang Monastery; a local artisan at work in Norlha’s atelier.

The first thing that hit me was the sound. A baritone hum, low and steady, rolled through the cobblestone passageways and courtyards of the Labrang Monastery in northwestern China’s Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It was barely past sunrise, the air still spearmint-cool, but already hundreds of pilgrims, young and old, were making the kora, walking clockwise around the site along a 3.5-kilometer loop of prayer wheels painted in saturated hues. Strings of mala beads slid through their fingers as they set each wheel spinning into a click-clacking rainbow blur. Some murmured mantras under their breath; others stopped every few steps to prostrate themselves, pressing their foreheads to stones polished smooth by decades of such devotion, their warm chuba robes picking up a layer of chalky dust.

As one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist complexes outside Tibet proper, Labrang feels more like a sprawling village—scruffy stray dogs, street signs, and all. Gannan, roughly the size of Switzerland, sits on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, far from Lhasa, in what Tibetans know as Amdo, one of the three historical regions of greater Tibet. Though now administered as part of China’s Gansu province, daily life here remains unmistakably Tibetan: shopfronts and signs bear spidery Tibetan script, bone-white chorten stupas and tangled prayer flags dot the hillsides, and locals—more than half of them ethnically Tibetan—still wear their traditional garb with defiant pride.

Dating back to the early 18th century, the Labrang complex doubles as a monastic school and encompasses more than 40 temples, study halls, and spire-topped pagodas. Lane after lane of small courtyard dwellings lines the streets within its walls; some 1,500 monks live here, clad in burgundy robes and hats like yellow mohawks. One of them, a friendly sort who introduced himself as Tony, showed me around, past darkened rooms piled high with thousands of woodblock-printed sutras and multistory prayer halls where towering Buddhas sat amid many-headed deities and wall-spanning thangka paintings. Everywhere, whispered prayers and wafts of yak-butter lamps mingled in the gelatinous air, making Tony’s ramblings about Tibetan lamas, Mahamudra meditations, and centuries of pilgrimage even harder to fully comprehend.

Inside one of the rooms, its walls adorned with sculptures carved from colored yak butter, I asked him to explain the crux of the temple’s teachings in simpler terms. “Inside of you are two feelings,” he replied after a thoughtful pause. “Those of the body and those of the soul. Most people take care of their body, but not of their soul. The balance is off. People are always chasing happiness, but don’t know its true meaning, so why do they spend their lives looking for it?”

I did not have the heart to tell him the actual reason I had traveled all this way, which was far less noble: I was here to go shopping.

Outside the prayer hall at Labrang Monastery in Gansu, China; Tony, one of the complex’s resident monks. — *Left to right:* Outside the prayer hall at Labrang Monastery; Tony, one of the complex’s resident monks.

Left to right: Scarves at the Norlha boutique in Zorgey Ritoma; the brand’s cofounder Dechen Yeshi at her nearby atelier.

The object of my pilgrimage lay a two-hour drive east, along a freshly paved serpentine road that cut through deep valleys, long tunnels, and grasslands still speckled with late-summer blooms. The village of Zorgey Ritoma appeared like a mirage—a cluster of low-slung houses with a red-banded, gold-roofed temple at its heart, and nothing but undulating steppe stretching out in every direction. It was here that Tibetan-American entrepreneur Dechen Yeshi and her mother, Kim, founded the fashion and homeware label Norlha nearly two decades ago, opening the brand’s timber-clad flagship boutique and showroom in 2023.

I met Yeshi at her workshop, where the rhythmic clatter of looms replaced the pastoral silence outside. Bundles of khullu—the downy undercoat yaks shed each summer—sat piled in corners, waiting to be spun into cashmere-like threads that felt much softer than you’d expect from such hardy animals. But there wasn’t much of it.

“Each yak only sheds a little bit,” Yeshi explained as she walked me past felting tables and spinning wheels. “Once the khullu has been washed and cleaned, we’re left with just 18 percent of the original volume. For the nomadic herders we buy from, it would’ve been pocket money.

“What they really needed was a stable source of income,” she continued, describing how the lure of big-city salaries and dwindling job opportunities in these rural areas threatened to push Tibetan nomadic culture into obscurity. So she built the workshop here instead, turning raw khullu into finished textiles on-site and training a local workforce to do it. Almost two decades on, that has translated into over 40,000 hours of vocational training—everything from sales to tailoring and dyeing—and jobs for more than 150 people, mostly women, from the surrounding community. Norlha’s pieces, meanwhile, now sell at high-end concept stores from Paris to New York to Tokyo.

In the new boutique—a light-flooded timber annex overlooking the workshop—I browsed through the fruits of the artisans’ labor: silky shawls and scarves in a rich assortment of styles; thick, US$3,400-a-pop bedcovers made from color-blocked khullu felt; and drapey shirts and jackets inspired by Tibetan chuba robes, with mandarin collars and toggle-knot closures. The brand has also opened a small guesthouse across the street, allowing patrons to turn a shopping spree into a deeper cultural immersion, with nearby temple visits, village walks, and hikes across those endless, yak-trodden hills.

“We didn’t want to just put a product out there,” Yeshi said. “We wanted to show people how it’s made, and celebrate the culture and the people behind it.”

*Left to right:* A cabin at Norden; the stone-paved “yak path” that loops around the camp.

A bouquet of wildflowers at Norden, a remote wilderness camp in Gansu, China; a hand-felted Norlha bedcover made from yak down. — *Left to right:* A bouquet of wildflowers at Norden; a hand-felted Norlha bedcover made from yak down.

Closer to Labrang, amid the vast, rolling tracts of the Sangke Grasslands, that vision takes on a more experiential form at Norden camp, which reopened last summer after a floor-to-ceiling overhaul. Its tents and wooden cabins speckle an unruly tangle of low shrubs and willow trees, cut through by braided streams and a stepping-stone “yak path” that loops through the grounds.

First launched in 2013, the camp was a homecoming of sorts for Yeshi’s partner (both in business and in life) Yidam Kyap, who was born into a semi-nomadic family nearby. The site, a winter pasture owned by a relative, was chosen for its proximity to Labrang as well as its prime perch within the seasonal grazing grounds of nomadic herders, whose cattle still roam the hills along the horizon. “We wanted people to come and really experience the plateau,” Kyap explained as he showed me around one afternoon. “There’s a healing power in being so close to nature.”

The original camp was modest, a handful of nomadic yak-hair tents and basic facilities. Rebuilt in 2023 under the direction of American architect and longtime family friend Blake Civiello, it has evolved into a much plusher setup: nine heated cabins constructed from unvarnished pine and wood salvaged from old village homes, fitted together using traditional Tibetan joinery techniques carried out by many of the same hands that have worked on Labrang Monastery over the years. Each cabin opens onto its own outdoor space, with a tented lounge warmed by a wood stove. Inside, tactile interiors take inspiration from their surroundings: the loft-style River cabin, set above a stream, comes draped in blue Norlha throws, tapestries, and wabi-sabi arrangements of pebbles, twigs, and dried flowers, while the Wildflower cabin draws on native blooms, with silky golden curtains and felted yak-wool pillows echoing the colors of spring.

Though all cabins have small bathroom areas, none have running water. “The grassland is a very fragile ecosystem,” Yidam explained. “We couldn’t just dig pipes everywhere.” Instead, copper basins and clay containers are refilled daily for drinking water and basic washing, while toilets rely on dry composting. For more thorough scrubs, there’s the bathhouse, a bow-shaped building with six spa-like suites overlooking a babbling stream and the grasslands beyond. Built from slate and reclaimed juniper wood, each has its own sauna, indoor and outdoor showers, and a deep hammered-brass tub that turns simple baths into a full-fledged wellness ritual.

*Left to right:* Yidam Kyap; yak momos with fried tofu at Norden.

*Left to right:* Norden’s cabins sit high on the Sangke Grasslands; the camp’s dining hall.

A staff member at Norden; inside one of the camp’s family cabins. — Left to right: A staff member at Norden; inside one of the family cabins.

Between a visit to Labrang and a hike to a prayer flag–pinned hilltop nearby, my days at the camp passed blissfully slowly. After a morning soak in the bathhouse, where tea was already waiting, I strolled over for breakfast in the high-beamed, barn-style dining hall, where a small buffet of tsampa porridge and homemade jams with toast padded out the menu of mushroom noodles, yak yogurt with nutty granola, and coddled eggs with cordyceps fungus. Other meals, whether served in sunken dining booths ringed by wildflower gardens or in tents pitched around the central firepit, similarly drew on local ingredients, with yak, foraged herbs, and barley forming the base for multi- course lunches and hot pot dinners developed by Singaporean chef Lynus Lim. In between, there was ample time to browse the on-site Norlha boutique or join a yoga session in the latticed Dewa meditation space, but a formal activities schedule has so far been deliberately left out. “We might introduce a Tibetan calligraphy class or a thangka-painting workshop next season,” Yidam said. “But really, we just want guests to enjoy the camp itself.”

For the owners, that back-to-basics simplicity is the point. “The idea was to present the plateau not only through objects, but also through lived experiences,” Yeshi told me. “It’s about celebrating what this place has to give.” This ethos is reflected in the design, the building materials, and the food, as well as in the people who run the camp day to day. As at Norlha, most of the staff hail from nearby villages, and their employment is structured to provide year-round stability, with salaries paid even when the camp closes during the harsh winter months. It’s a way, Yeshi explained, to keep a younger generation close to their roots, and ultimately carry on the traditions that have shaped their families’ ways of life for centuries.

As I sat by the fire one evening, a cup of barley wine warming my hands, Tony the monk’s words returned to me. His idea of balance—body and soul, past and present—and finding the true meaning of happiness got me thinking: did I find it in Gannan? That shall remain one of life’s insoluble conundrums. But here, on this stretch of grassland rolling toward a darkening horizon, where the air carried the scent of wildflowers and woodsmoke, I sensed I’d come close.

The grasslands outside Zorgey Ritoma village in Gansu, China. — The grasslands outside Zorgey Ritoma village.

Xiahe Airport, the gateway to this corner of Gannan, is served by Sichuan Airlines flights from Chengdu. Norden operates from May to November, with two-night stays starting at US$2,400, full-board, including airport transfers and guided activities.

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2026 print issue of DestinAsian magazine (“Higher Ground”). Buy a single issue or subscribe here.

How Norlha is Sharing Gansu’s Tibetan Culture with the World