A few decades ago, Ladakh, the “abode of snows”, was still cut off from the rest of the world: only traders’ caravans ventured over the high passes, between Kashmir, Pakistan and China. On the high plateaus live the Changpas, goat herders whose pashmina wool is the wealth of the country. It is there, for the first destination of the series, that Christophe sets off on their trail. But the road has arrived before him, and with it the lorries, the tarmac, the houses of Leh. On the shores of Lake Tso Kar, twenty-four families still live as their ancestors did, and know that their children will not keep the herds.
Perhaps a thousand yaks and 2,500 sheep and goats: every fortnight or three weeks, the Changpas lead the herd to another valley.A former royal city, Leh, the capital, is changing: the old barracks are becoming guest houses for tourists. Yet it remains the hub of the pashmina trade. In the old bazaar, Ali Khan, a wool merchant, explains that the nomads still make their living from it. No more bartering for barley: this year, a kilo is worth 700 rupees, about fifteen euros, the equivalent of an average wage in the region. The wool comes from the Changtang, who are not easy to find. “The Changtang, they’re like the stars up there. They disappear as fast as they appear.” Others have already stopped. In a neighbouring village, between the Tibetan refugees and the houses under construction, Kunzung, a herder from Rupshu, settled five or six years ago, after a winter of snow. “I am a nomad”, he says nonetheless. “And now all I have is this house. I no longer have the mountain, or the valleys.” It is warmer between walls, and the young want school; it is their choice, but in his eyes a mistake, one that will lose the traditions. Here, there is nothing left for the goats or the yaks to graze. “We have no resources left to live on. We have nothing left here.”
Leh and its 10,000 inhabitants are changing: 20% of Ladakhis are now Muslim, and the old barracks take in tourists.In the old days, the caravan linking Leh to Zanskar took two weeks; since the road was built, it takes two interminable days by bus, from hairpin bends to reversing manoeuvres, to reach Padum, the end of the line, at 3,550 metres. Tashi has opened the only internet café there. He takes Christophe to see Garshung, an amshi, one of those Tibetan doctors whose science is said to have been born two and a half thousand years ago. Being an amshi, he says, “means helping others, healing those who suffer”. Western medicine brings relief in two or three days, but the ill comes back: “We amshis try to heal the root of the ill.” He takes the pulse before sunrise and picks his plants at altitude, where they are purer. Monks, he says, meditate for years near the glaciers, because the heart too becomes pure at high altitude. At Barden monastery, the monks explain that the nomads no longer come to Zanskar: they used to exchange their wool there for food; because of the road, they now go straight to Leh. Some thirty children from the neighbouring villages, aged eight to twelve, study at the monastery school, where teaching is free. Most will become monks.
Ladakh keeps its identity, but “pouring out tongues of tarmac like that” brings people from ever further away.On the shores of Tso Kar, the village is inhabited only in winter; in summer, the nomads are in the valleys of Rupshu. The trade routes where butter was exchanged for barley have just disappeared, and tarmac has won the day. Deep in a valley, in a lunar landscape, twenty-four families still live as their ancestors did. When to strike camp? The chief decides, and Thukjay explains how he is chosen: “we play dice and the one who loses becomes the chief.” It changes every year. The herd is the only means of subsistence: the goats’ wool to trade and to clothe themselves, the milk to feed themselves. Each family has its own animals, but they are brought together for the mountain, and the women and children follow them in turn. A grandmother churns butter until sunset. She is not glad to be leaving: “I’m too old to travel, but we have no choice.” That day, the camp meets an envoy from the government: the land around the lake could be rented out as a campsite, for some 40,000 rupees. It remains to be seen how to share the money among the families. Once again, it will be left to chance.
Back from the mountain, everyone takes back their own animals; some bear a blue mark on their horns so that their owner can recognise them.
Twenty years ago, people here ate only tsampa, barley flour with tea; rice and potatoes were almost unknown.
Once a year, on a fixed date, wandering monks come to pray in each family so that the herd always comes back and is not eaten by a wolf.As a child, Thukjay did everything on foot, long journeys with his father. “When planes passed in the sky, we would hide to avoid the shadows of the machines.” Today everyone is leaving the mountain for the town, convinced that life is better in houses, especially in winter, when it is minus thirty or minus forty. His son has settled in Leh, where he works in transport, and no one will look after his herd after him. In the morning, it has hailed for much of the night. It is five o’clock, time to leave: in five minutes, the camp collapses like a house of cards, and everyone falls back into the precise gestures of packing up. The yaks are loaded, the riders round up the animals, and the caravan climbs towards another valley. Christophe leaves them with a worry: that he has witnessed what, in ten years perhaps, will no longer exist.
At 4,700 metres, the caravan is going only twenty kilometres away, to another valley at about the same height.
Christophe simply hopes that they can preserve their tradition “and their choice to live as free men, as nomads”.“It makes me sad, of course, because it’s the end of a story, an identity disappearing. But it’s their choice, I have to respect it.”Thukjay