How Did Himalayan Monks Survive Winter at 4,000 Metres?

How real people survived history's worst places, and whether Gary can. 10 AM and 10 PM ET. Fifteen degrees below zero, thin air and a valley cut off by snow. Gary lands at a cliff monastery in Zanskar in the Himalayas and has to get through the winter the way the people there really do: slowing down for the altitude, one small fire fed by dung cakes, butter tea and barley flour that needs no cooking, thick mud walls, and the breathing practice monks call tummo. 00:00 Fifteen below, and the air runs thin 0:58 The air that runs thin 2:39 The only fire in the building 4:25 Barley and a bowl of butter 6:14 Walls that drink the sun 7:59 The fire you light inside 10:19 Did Gary survive? Sources: "Zanskar", Wikipedia (secondary): valley elevation 3,600-4,000 m and Padum climate table (January mean minimum -26 C) ICAR Krishi Vigyan Kendra, "Energy Innovations in Zanskar Valley" (icar.gov.in): dung cakes for cooking and heating at about -30 C Kozhevnikov, Elliott, Shephard & Gramann, "Neurocognitive and Somatic Components of Temperature Increases during g-Tummo Meditation", PLOS ONE (2013) Benson et al., "Body temperature changes during the practice of g Tum-mo yoga", Nature (1982), via Wikipedia "Tummo" (secondary) "Altitude sickness" and "Tibetan people", Wikipedia (secondary); "Butter tea", "Tsampa", "Phugtal Monastery", "Chadar trek", Wikipedia (secondary) Jamyang Foundation, "Nuns of Zangskar"; Studio Matrx, "Vernacular architecture of Ladakh" (secondary) Gary's winter is a dramatised story built on how people in Zanskar live and what researchers have measured; his monastery is representative, not a recorded one. Illustrations are AI-assisted; narration is a synthetic voice. #history #himalaya #survival