Snowcap Point

Qinghai province, China
In February of 2010, I had the privilege of accompanying my older cousin to a mountain that just so happened to be his father's hometown. Our purpose for travelling there was to attend an annual ritual to worship his ancestors, which takes place each year after the Chinese New Year. One of the peculiar customs involved the oldest son standing at the top of the first tomb and tossing bread to the rest of the family members. The bread then rolls across all the tombs, and it is believed that whoever catches the bread will receive good luck after eating it.As we made our way towards their family graveyard, specifically, the family grave-mountain, we were mesmerized by the stunning scenery that surrounded us. My cousin asked if I could capture the millions of tiny sparkling snow reflections created by the snowflakes, While it was a remarkable experience witnessing those shimmering reflections, my attempts to capture them in a photo proved to be quite challenging. Despite several attempts, the picture didn't turn out very clearly.The entire trip was a truly unique experience, and I was overly excited, asking my cousin many questions, but after some time, he drew my attention to the fact that most of the family members were quiet. I was concerned that talking too much on the way to the ceremony might be considered rude, but he explained that the altitude was almost 4500m, and the family members were conserving their oxygen by keeping their mouths shut. And he suggested that if I felt dizzy, I should also try to keep quiet for a while and conserve some oxygen for myself. While admiring the mountains' magnificence, I thought about their sublimity and couldn't help but wonder why they were so captivating.People have always praised the sublimity of those mountains, and recently, I came across a lecture that shed some light on the subject. The lecturer mentioned Burke's theory on sublimity, which links it with danger, power, vacuity, darkness, solitude, silence, vastness, potential, difficulty, and color, and it always has an element of horror. Horror is a fundamental aspect of people's lives on the entire Tibetan plateau. I recall playing a game with my cousins, asking each other if we were brave enough to stare at the Milky Way alone by lying in the desert next to the town where we lived. It was perhaps my earliest memory of encountering cosmic horror.