That time a roadside yak butcher in Mongolia gave me the quickest anatomy lesson of my life
I was backpacking through Mongolia last fall and stumbled upon a remote ger camp where they were preparing a yak for a celebration. The local butcher, who spoke no English, saw me watching and just handed me a knife, gesturing for me to join in. He proceeded to demonstrate their method, which was basically disassembling the entire beast on a tarp in under twenty minutes, all with a few sharp motions. I tried to follow along, but my precision cuts were clearly too slow for his liking, and he kept nudging me aside with a grin, lmao. The absurd part was how he'd point at a muscle group, say its Mongolian name, and then slice it free before I could even process it. I ended up mostly holding parts steady while he worked, but I picked up on their respect for using absolutely everything, down to the tendons. It was a wild, hands-on crash course in efficiency that made my shop back home feel downright leisurely. Definitely a highlight of the trip and a story I tell new apprentices now.