Little is known about the roof of the world, its harsh land serving as a natural deterrent to outsiders. Even so, high in the Hengduan Mountains live the Ashaktsang family. The wealthiest family in Kham, and its people dependent on them for their trade, they lived an unchallenged, nomadic lifestyle deep in the thick evergreen forests of the east and high in the grasslands to the north. A remote and largely uninhabited expanse, the people referred to their homeland as chuzhi gangdruk: four rivers and six ranges.

This story is about the people, but it is also about the land. A land that breathes and has ideas of its own.