Ladakh-Changthang
In June 2024 I visited Ladakh (see also the photo essay by Sierra Gladfelter and Eben Yonetti) as a participant in a short program run by the Modern Tibetan Studies program at Columbia University focused on “rural green entrepreneurship.” From Leh, the capital, we drove along the Leh-Manali highway to the village of Gya, staying at the guest house of filmmaker Stanzin Dorje. There we had the opportunity to visit his sister Tsering, the subject of his award-winning documentary , at their winter pasture.
We then proceeded to drive toward Hanle, in the Changthang region of Ladakh, stopping at several Tibetan villages and Tibetan Children’s Village schools on the way there and back to Leh. Livelihoods are shifting rapidly throughout the region as education draws children away from home and towards Leh or other urban centers in India. This trend is even more pronounced for Tibetan refugee communities, who in some cases must pay their host villages a grass fee for the livestock they raise, and who face barriers such as the inability to own land and obtain government jobs. The Tibetan settlement at Nyoma, for example, counts 223 community members, but only around 50, all elderly, reside in the village, with the remaining away at school, working in Delhi or elsewhere in India, or abroad. One young Tibetan woman explained that youth like herself don’t even want to return to the grasslands on summer holidays. Specialists in fiber arts on our trip asked middle-aged women about whether they had passed on their skills in weaving carpets but were told that their children had no interest.
The decline in labor availability as children leave for other places has contributed to changing herd composition. Many households have given up horses and yaks, once used for transportation, now that motorized vehicles are available. Sheep, once useful for making woolen clothing and carpets, are on the decline as well given globally low market prices for wool, and the influx of commodified synthetic clothing. On the other hand, the number of goats has significantly increased due to the growing demand for pashmina shawls. At the same time, seasonal mobility has been significantly reduced as tourism and service provision have encouraged sedentarization, and as traditional grazing areas have been lost due to the border conflict, military use of land, and soon, solar PV plants. Declining precipitation due to climate change exacerbate these challenges, making herding ever more difficult.
We spent two nights at Hanle, a large village close to the border with Tibet, which is now doubly gazetted as part of the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary as well as the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve. Tourists are attracted to Hanle for bird and other wildlife viewing, astrotourism, and in many cases to drive on what is billed as the world’s highest motorable world, over the 5883 meter (19,300) feet Umling La pass close to the border. Tsewang Namgail, director of the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, took us to look for Tibetan gazelles and Pallas’s cat (alas, we spotted neither), and introduced us to a group of young Ladakhi nature guides, who are seeking to lessen the impact of tourism on wildlife. Homestays are seen as both useful for attracting tourists and generating income, but also potentially harmful. A new government program to promote homestays provides subsidies, but also enforce requirements which are ecologically inappropriate for the area.
Our trip to Ladakh took place during the last phase of the Indian general election. This was the first election since the BJP’s 2019 abrogation of Article 370, which revoked the special status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Ladakhis briefly celebrated their long-standing demand for separation from Jammu and Kashmir, but skepticism quickly grew as Ladakh was turned into a Union Territory without a legislative assembly or elected government. The BJP has also reneged on its initial promise to give Ladakh autonomous tribal district status. Thus protestors called for statehood in the name of climate change, and the need for local control to put safeguards on the types of development and land grabbing (eg through mass tourism or mining) that could further exacerbate the vulnerabilities already created by global climate change. Reflecting these concerns, an independent candidate won the Ladakh seat, beating both the BJP and Congress party candidates.