Jikmey Dorje has witnessed how growing traffic enriches the life of Medog.

Jikmey Dorje says no one knows better how roads can change a man's life than himself.

The 55-year-old has witnessed Medog's traffic evolve over the past few decades, from the meandering forest path to a horse road, a way for small tractors and now the new roadway. He has also become wealthy by closely monitoring such improvements.

Growing up in a village near Medog's county town, Jikmey had to help relieve the family burdens because of his mother's disability and his father's bad health. When he was 11, he started carrying home salt and other daily necessities on his back from outside the county, following other villagers. He would tote about 15 kilograms of salt at first, walking several days on the poor roads and climbing over snow-capped mountains.

"I cried many times on the way, because I was too young and I couldn't catch others," he recalls.

As he grew older and stronger, the burden on his back got heavier and heavier.

In the late 1980s, Medog had a horse track leading to the outside world, and teams of horses carrying goods were common.

Jikmey joined the horse-transport business. At first, he could only afford to buy a few horses, and often had to take the extra goods on his own back.

"I'd buy one more horse at a time with the money I saved," says Jikmey, who owned 12 horses by 1998. He hired fellow villagers as his assistants.

Each journey by horse took more than 10 days. The crew carried plastic sheet and cooking tools, and cut trees for simple shelters at night.

They tried to rest near grasslands for the horses. Sometimes humans had to take up the goods when a horse suddenly fell ill on the way, he says.

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