Chilip

Tshomo, a young herdswoman from Laya who lives with her herd of yaks on a lonely mountain pasture, hears his cries, saves the chilip, and soon takes him under her wing in every sense of the word.

There are accounts of curious villagers, unaccustomed to seeing those who come from faraway lands, turning up at the door “to have a look at the chilip.” This term for a Westerner is at once affectionate but slightly disparaging.

Back in Thimphu I had heard about a (male) Fulbrighter being undressed down to his underwear in a parking lot. “The ritual undressing of the chilip,” a friend had called it, chilip (“grey hair”) being the local word for foreigners.