Yaks have many uses. Their dung fuelled the fires of the nomads who once roamed the largely treeless Tibetan plateau. Yak milk is turned into butter, yoghurt and extremely hard dried cheese; the butter is burnt as lamp oil, used in tea or smeared on the face as a cosmetic.

Bones are carved into rosaries. Yak hair makes tents, ropes, bags, blankets and clothes, and the hides are converted into boots or even small boats to cross the region’s many rivers. The tails become souvenirs or theatre props, finding their place in opera wigs, Santa Claus beards and the costumes of Chinese lion-dancers.

Michael Buckley’s diversion into the wondrous utility of this high-altitude beast of burden is a rare moment of relief in Meltdown in Tibet, his otherwise relentless polemic against what he portrays as Chinese ecocide in the vast Himalayan land it invaded in 1950.