Tibetan pastoralists are famous for their tents of black yak-hair cloth stretched over a complex structure of long ropes and external poles. Travellers of the past compared them to spiders, but Tsering Drölma said that they rather resemble turtles. These tents are an important identity marker, not only for the Tibetan pastoralists as such, but for people inhabiting various different parts of pastoral Tibet. The tents that the people of Metsang have, as my informants stressed, are different from those the Goloks use. It is possible to find three types of tent in Domkhok, which differ in outline, shape of their covering and size of the living space inside. The rinag is square in its ground plan, large and spacious, and its cover is sewn from vertical stripes. The chobra is rectangular and its cover made of horizontal stripes. The third type, ramari, mixes the features of the other two: it has the plan of the chobra and a cover made as in a rinag. This is the sort of tent Tsering Drölma had. Her uncle's family lived in a rinag.

Jigmed Dorji's tent was one of the oldest in Domkhok: it was sewn by his grandfather in the 1940s. Although it had been repaired countless times and there was almost nothing of the original model left, in the memory of its users it was the very same tent that had been in the family for generations (Figure 21). Everyone in the township could tell whose tents were the oldest. However, in spite of their large sentimental and historical value, the black tents were not in common use. The pastoralists used them as an all-season dwelling until several decades ago. Even in the people's communes, as they noted, the tents remained in use: although confiscated (as was much other private property) at the beginning of the collectivization, they were returned to their owners later. Things started changing during the 1980s when the pastoralists built their first houses on their winter quarters. They then lived in houses for the greater part of the year and moved into tents for the warmest months.