“Turbulence is normal,” I said, feigning more assurance than I felt as the plane banked and shuddered across the sky between Dhaka and Calcutta.
Jen-Pei and I had met while travelling across Asia and had fallen into a relationship, a result of the joy of discovery, loneliness and the forced intimacy of budget travel.
Lake Lugu, in China’s Northern Yunan Province; home of the aboriginal Mosuo tribe, the last purely matriarchal people left in China. The Mosuo are best known for their practice of walking marriage, a form of poly-amoury in which the women – masters of the household – chose their lovers for the evening from among the men of the tribe. Children are raised semi-communally, taking the mother’s name and living in the mother’s home.
