The size of our community is shrinking and all our techniques are slowly becoming lost as less people are practicing them. We wish many people from all over the world would also help carry on these practices, little by little, so that they will not disappear and the knowledge will continue.
Tashi Chodon
The life of nomadic and land-based communities all around the world is being threatened. Changing weather patterns make it harder to live off the land and there is an increasing need to shift from a trade economy to earning local currency. Last year when I was working with we are KAL and the Karnak community in Ladakh, India, I was able to see firsthand the drastic changes in lifestyle from one generation to another.
The women I spoke with are in their sixties and seventies and have relocated to a district of the capital city Leh called Karnak-ling, where a large concentration of the community now lives. Life there is much easier than it was before, they tell me. “I miss the summertime” says Ane Padma Angmo. “In the summertime, I am so happy there but winter is so difficult. There was such high snow and we had to climb through it up the mountains. Now that I am here there’s no longer the need to work so much; there are fewer challenges and much more ease.”
The women spent most of their life living on their ancestral land on the Changthang plateau in the high Himalayas and the way of life - tending the animals, cooking over the fire, weaving their textiles - are still very alive within them. This knowledge has been passed down to them for many generations, yet now they see their children choosing a different path.
“My husband and I tried passing on our practice of the nomadic life to our children but they were not interested to learn,” says Ane Tsering Angmo. “So there was no choice. The tent making and the weaving, we wanted to share this with them but they did not care. Now my son is a truck driver and he has no time.”
Ane Padma Angmo adds, “I also dreamed my son would follow these nomadic practices but he doesn’t want to. He just does whatever he wants. I wish he would carry on these parts of our life but he makes his own choices and there’s not really any option.”
It was deeply moving to hear the stories of the women and to feel their sadness in not being able to pass along this knowledge to their children. The skill and beauty of these traditional practices are not just special as a relic of the past, they are essential to an understanding of our place in the world that is only becoming more important as time goes on.
As someone who has been fortunate to experience much of this beautiful world, I can say with certainty that there is something incredibly special about the way of life of the people of Ladakh. There is an ingenuity and exquisite integrity in their ways of life - in the weaving, the cooking, in building shelter - that far surpases the excess and complexity of urban life. The people have a clarity in their gaze and earnestness in their mannerisms. And, perhaps most essentially, they nurture a living relationship with the elements and life forms around them that years of study could ever achieve.
further resources -
Ancient Futures; Learning From Ladakh: a documentary by Helena Norberg-Hodge, an activist and visionary who spent several decades living in Ladakh. Her book by the same namedives deeper into the story of Ladakh and invites us to honor this knowledge by using it to build a more harmonious and honest future.
Jungwa: The Broken Balance a short film by Ladakhi filmmaker Stanzin Dorjai Gya about the devestation of the flash floods of 2010 and how the four elements - fire, earth, air, water - are now imbalanced. ༄