Nomad's Hearth

The hearth at the back of the kitchen has never gone cold. Stanzin lights it before dawn to steep the day's butter tea — churned, salted, and served in copper bowls.

The menu is short and stubborn: thukpa, momos, skyu, khambir bread, and apricot cake. Everything else, he says, is a distraction.

In the evenings the room fills with traders, trekkers, and the same handful of neighbours who have been coming since the day it opened.