Kharnak Nomads Crossroads
In the isolated high plains of Ladakh, in India’s Himalayas, there used to be a community of 120 Kharnak Nomadic families that worked in the Pashmina and sheep wool business for centuries. The incredibly harsh climate conditions and the lack of basic services like health and education, lead most of the families to leave their native place and move to the city, a process that has been taking place for the past 20 years. Today there are only 16 families living in Kharnak -most of them seniors-, taking care of approximately 7000 sheep and goats and 300 yaks, an incredibly challenging task.
At this point, almost all families of this community have settled together in Kharnakling, a suburb close to Leh -Ladakh’s capital-, which is about 200 kms from their homeland.
During the winter, most of the people who still work in Kharnak will move to the city, to their second home, leaving their livestock in the hands of paid shepherds in the highlands.
The younger generation, next in line to take over the work with the livestock, migrated to the cities long ago to receive formal education in boarding schools. This was naturally a very tough and painful decision to make for the parents, who wouldn’t be able to see their children growing up in hope to enable them for a better future.
The incredibly rich knowledge of their pastoralist way of life, which has been passed from elderly to young over hundreds of years, will be lost with this generational gap. Most likely this will result in the disappearance of the nomadic practices and its wool trade, something that both young and old are well conscious of and concerned about.
Although these young people practically never experienced the harsh life in Kharnak, they are aware about the importance of keeping their rich traditions, culture, trade and most importantly their identity alive, and the upcoming challenges that come along to do so.
On top of all this, Ladakh faces a new political scenario. In 2019 it became a Union Territory of India, a situation that will surely bring along new opportunities, but also a lot of uncertainties to them.