The interior of a nomad tent holds all the family's possessions. There will be a stove for cooking and boiling water. The principal diet of nomad people is tsampa and yak butter (mixed together with tea), dried yak cheese and sometimes yak meat. The tent will also house a family altar with Buddha images and yak-butter candles that are left burning night and day.

Next to the altar is a box that contains the family's jewellery and other valuables. In the warm summer months it is not unusual for nomad people to sleep outside their tent on a sheepskin, covering themselves with rough yak-hair blankets. Tending the herds of yaks and sheep is carried out by the men during the day. Women and children stay together in the camp where they are guarded by one of the men and the ferocious Tibetan mastiffs that are the constant companions of Tibet's nomads. The women and children usually work during the day doing daily chores around the camp, weaving blankets and tanning sheep skins. Women are normally in charge of making dairy products such as butter and cheese. Nomads graze their herds through the summer months and into late autumn. By this time the herds should be strong and healthy, and with the onset of winter it is time to go to the markets of some urban centre. The farmers of Tibet do the same, and trade between nomads and farmers provides the former with tsampa and the latter with meat and butter.

The nomads of Tibet have also traditionally traded in salt, which is collected from the Changtang plateau and transported south in bricks, often to the border with Nepal, where it is traded for grain. These annual caravans are fast dying out. Traditional life suffered its greatest setback in 1968 when nomads were collectivised and forcibly settled by the government. In 1981 the communes were dissolved and the collectivised livestock was divided equally with everyone getting five yaks, 25 sheep and seven goats. Nomads today generally rank among the poorest people in Tibet.

The nomads, like the farmers of Tibet, take their dead to high places and leave them for the birds. However, a ceremony, where the dead body is placed in a sitting position for a day and prayers are recited over it, is usually conducted first.

Nomad marriage customs, however, differ from those of farming communities in many ways. To a certain extent they are arranged by the families involved. When a child comes of a marriageable age, enquiries are made and when a suitable match is found the two people meet and exchange gifts. If they like each other, these informal meetings and ritual exchanges of gifts may go on for some time. The date for a marriage is decided by an astrologer, and when the date arrives the family of the son rides to the camp of their prospective daughter-in-law to collect her. When they arrive there is a custom of feigned mutual abuse that appears to verge on giving way to violence at any moment. This may continue for several days before the son's family finally carry off the daughter to their camp and she enters a new life.