The legendary Chamagudao, or Tea-Horse Road, winds through dizzying mountain passes, across famed rivers like the Mekong and the Yangtze, and past monasteries and meadows in a circuitous route from Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces in western China to the Tibetan capital city of Lhasa. Actually a network of roads, trails, and highways, rather than one distinct route, the Chamagudao once stretched for almost 1,400 miles--a conduit along which the historic trade between the mighty Chinese Empire and the nomadic Tibetans linked remote villages and ethnic groups. Following the Chamagudao, photographer Michael Yamashita takes a rare and enchanting look into the changing world of Tibet--ancient and modern, sacred and secular--before the legends and mysteries of the Tea-Horse Road disappear into the Tibetan mist.
