Bruce treks for ten days into the high mountains in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan where he stays for a month with the isolated Layap people. They are devout Buddhists and yak herders, cut off from the outside world for half the year by deep snow. Bruce lives a life of unrelenting hardness, herding with the men in the high pastures and wrestling yaks to the ground to push salt into their stomachs, struggling for breath in the thin air at over 17,000 feet. It is a spiritual journey for Bruce, as the community's astrologer reads his birth chart and tells him he's an emotional disaster, and his destiny is to be re-incarnated as a monkey. Bruce studies the four noble truths and ultimately learns a lesson of humility after an epic three-day attempt to drive his yak train across a snow-covered pass in the high mountains.