Ladakhi
Black Carbon and Black Anger: Changing Conditions in Ladakh [book review]
The old Ladakhi men are sitting in a line on one side of the community hall arranged by descending age, with the eldest in the corner. The women bring around five gallon buckets of chang, the local beverage, bantering amiably as they fill the mugs of the men. The villagers living in Kumik, in the […]
Ladakhi Village Electrified
Last month, Paras Loomba led a team of volunteers into Shingo, a remote Ladakhi village, to install a new, solar powered, electrical system for the villagers. The village, located within the well-known Hemis National Park, has never had electricity before. The national park, home to the densest concentration of snow leopards of any protected area […]
Ladakhi Woman Builds a Trekking Business
Thinlas Chorol, a Ladakhi woman, has challenged a profession that previously had been a male preserve by founding a trekking company staffed entirely by women from rural Ladakh. In the process, Ms. Chorol’s determination in establishing her new business exemplifies the traditional equality and strength of Ladakhi women. The writer of a news story last […]
Progress among the Ladakhis
Every spring and summer, Queen Elizabeth I of England repeatedly ventured out on a “progress,” a series of visits to communities in her realm so she could interact with her subjects. Over the course of her reign, from 1558 to 1603, she visited over 400 hosts, both communities and individual aristocrats who could entertain her […]
Is Baltistan Peaceful?
A reporter for the Hindustan Times recently decided to visit the village of Turtuk, a Balti community in the Shyok Valley of Ladakh near the border with Pakistan. While his report is basically a travel piece, it presents some interesting information about this seldom visited region. Furquan Ameen Siddiqui, the reporter, had been a tourist […]
A Love Jihad in Ladakh
Tensions in Ladakh over the fact that Muslims are producing more babies than Buddhists bubbled to the surface once again last week. The Ladakh Buddhist Association (LBA) sent a letter to the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, plus other officials protesting what it calls a “love jihad” by Muslims. A journal article by Sara […]
Ice Stupas in Ladakh
Five years ago, news stories cited Chewang Norphel for figuring out a smart way to preserve water for Ladakhi farmers, despite increasingly arid climate conditions in their region. The approach developed by the then 74-year old former civil engineer—building artificial glaciers in the high country in order to preserve water into the late spring for […]
Pashmina Wool in Ladakh
Although Babar Afzal comes from the city of Jammu, he is devoting a lot of energy to saving and revitalizing pashmina goat wool production in Ladakh. He founded the Pashmina Goat Project in 2012 to address the concerns and promote the interests of the goat herders in the Changtang region of Ladakh, near the southeastern […]
Electricity in a Ladakhi Village
The Ladakhi people of Sumda Chenmo had never enjoyed electricity in their remote village, located in the Ripchar Valley of the Zanskar Range, in southwestern Ladakh. On August 20 in the early evening, a trekking expedition turned on the lights. While trekking expeditions frequently go through the valley, this group of people had other goals […]
The Ladakh Project: An Audiovisual Mashup
The Times of India reported last week that Ladakh had inspired Sarvesh Shrivastava, a music composer/producer from Mumbai, to produce a new audiovisual mashup called “The Ladakh Project.” He and two others toured the area widely for two weeks in May making music, filming, photographing and recording in deserts, mountains, and next to the famous […]
