If you are wondering what that is, all stacked up in the window of the outhouse like that, why, those would be flattened patties of yak dung. Due to a combination of poverty and a remote geographical location that is very hard to reach, the people of the Himalayas have very little access to a great number of things. What they do have in copious amounts is yak poop, so we frequently saw them using it as a substitution for a variety of products that you and I probably take for granted.

They flatten it and lay it out in the sun to dry. Once flattened and dried, the most common application of these yak dung patties was as a sort of mortar for building walls and fences, or to reinforce the walls of existing structures.

I'm not making a joke about this here solely due to the fact that I had too many, and they all just sort of bottlenecked in my brain and threw me onto a sort of waking paralysis of yak dung humor, no, I'm not making a joke about it because I honestly believe they were doing the best with what they have been given. If forced to live high in the Himalayas, on the side of an impossible mountain, I honestly believe that I, myself, would have eventually come to the same conclusion, and started using every single material I had at my disposal.

And truth be told, the yak dung patties, and all the structures created with them, really didn't smell as bad as you might think!

Well, not until they started BURNING THE DUNG, which, sadly, seemed to be happening constantly.