Becoming a small stone right into a sling made from yak wool, Tsering Stobdan whipped his wrist and let the article fly, sending it hovering throughout the arid panorama. This, he informed me, was how he protects his flock from predators and convinces straggling goats to return — simply one of many numerous expertise he has realized within the final 60 years that permit him to rear his animals in such an unforgiving panorama.
In the meantime, some 15,000 toes above sea stage, I used to be merely attempting to breathe. Right here on the Changthang plateau, in a distant area of the Indian Himalayas, the altitude had left me lightheaded and gasping for air.
Tsering Stobdan is a member of a nomadic neighborhood often called the Kharnak, who for hundreds of years have raised yaks, sheep and goats within the excessive plains of Ladakh, in northern India, one of the crucial hauntingly stunning — if harsh and inhospitable — locations on earth.
I first visited the realm in 2016, in the midst of a protracted overland journey from Cambodia to Berlin. Whereas passing via Nagaland, in northeastern India, I met a person from Himachal Pradesh, a neighboring state of Ladakh, who informed me about the fantastic thing about the Himalayas and the nomadic methods of the individuals who lived there. Based mostly on his tales, I rented a bike and headed to Leh, Ladakh’s capital.
In Leh I used to be related with a younger member of the Kharnak neighborhood who took me to satisfy his household on the Changthang plateau. There I defined my curiosity of their tradition and my intentions of documenting their day by day life. Throughout my monthlong keep, they welcomed me graciously and allowed me to take part in almost each side of their lives.
In 2019 I returned to Ladakh to go to with the households I’d met three years earlier. This time, I stayed for greater than six weeks, shifting between the neighborhood’s nomadic camps and a small city on the outskirts of Leh.
As soon as a flourishing tribe, the Kharnak neighborhood is now dwindling. Youthful generations are being despatched to close by cities, the place they will discover higher well being care and academic alternatives. And whereas pashmina, the light-weight wool sheared from the bellies of Himalayan mountain goats, is a worthwhile product, life within the mountains is awfully troublesome, particularly within the winter.
Immediately, fewer than 20 households are left to look after almost 7,000 sheep and goats, together with a number of hundred yaks. And, like Tsering Stobdan, lots of those that stay are rising older and are much less ready to deal with the day by day calls for of their work.
Local weather change has additionally had a profound impact on the Kharnak’s lifestyle. Climate has change into tougher to foretell, rain patterns particularly. Due to warming temperatures and the overuse of sure pastures, areas as soon as thick with vegetation now lie barren. Small glaciers, which for hundreds of years offered a dependable supply of water, are receding.
Because of this, Kharnak shepherds are compelled to shuffle their flocks round extra ceaselessly and with much less certainty.
Amongst these nomadic communities, households and animals stay in strict interdependency. The milk from the sheep, goats and yaks — made into cheese, yogurt and butter — kinds the muse of the dairy-based weight loss plan.
Life for the Kharnak is troublesome year-round. Throughout the longer days of spring and summer time, the shepherds milk and shear their animals within the early-morning hours earlier than taking them out to graze, usually strolling greater than 12 miles a day at altitude. One other spherical of milking and shearing takes place within the night.
However the work doesn’t finish there. Meals should be cooked, sheds maintained, carpets woven, ropes fabricated, manure collected for gasoline.
The true challenges, although, are available in winter, when the temperatures drop to beneath -30 levels Fahrenheit. Roadways are sometimes blocked, and meals turns into scarce. Throughout these lengthy months, from November to April, the livestock are enclosed in shelters and fed animal feed that’s offered by the federal government.
Throughout the winter, many of the Kharnak transfer quickly to a city referred to as Kharnakling, on the outskirts of Leh, some 90 miles from their highland pastures. Whereas away, they depart their livestock within the palms of some relations and paid shepherds, who look after the animals in the course of the harshest months of the 12 months.
To afford their houses in Kharnakling, most of the nomads needed to promote their animals and depart behind their conventional stone homes and tents within the mountains. And with extra frequency, members of the neighborhood are remaining in Kharnakling year-round, having given up on their outdated lifestyle.
At their residence in Kharnakling, I talked with a Kharnak elder and one in every of his grandsons. Dawa Tundup, who was 83 once I met him, had left behind his nomadic life to settle close to town, the place he may stay extra comfortably and with higher entry to well being care. He reminisced about his days within the highlands and dreamed of returning, he stated, however acknowledged that life there had change into untenable for many youthful folks, given the dearth of correct faculties.
Karma Tsiring, his grandson, had studied in Chandighar, a metropolis some 250 miles south. Whereas he acknowledged that his life is in lots of respects simpler than that of his grandfather, he additionally spoke about new types of stress that, previously, his relations by no means needed to cope with.
All the pieces within the metropolis is about cash, he lamented, including that many city values, centered on consumerism, have been very completely different from the worth system taught by his ancestors at residence.
Later, whereas attending a collection of conventional festivals held within the mountains, I watched as younger males carried out ancestral herding expertise, together with flinging stones on horseback. Right here, the curiosity amongst youthful generations within the tradition of their elders was palpable, as most of them had come all the way in which from town for this one occasion.
There have been no winners or losers in the course of the festivities. As an alternative, the riders got a shot of chhang, an area Ladakh beer, and a khata, a conventional Tibetan scarf, each time they hit their targets.
It was a heartwarming scene: tribal elders instilling hard-earned knowledge amongst their enthusiastic descendants.
Nonetheless, one of many best issues among the many Kharnak is that their huge retailer of nomadic knowledge — the precise varieties of grass that sure animals have to survive, how meat is dried and preserved, how non permanent shelters might be constructed with meager supplies, amongst 1000’s of different examples — shall be misplaced within the coming years.
Dealing with a generational exodus and the threats of a altering local weather, their wealthy tradition, amassed over centuries, might vanish in what quantities to the blink of an eye fixed.
