Prayaan: A journey to Ladakh and Within (Part 2)

It took us close to 2 and a half hours to reach this village from the town. The road to Umla was smooth and without any potholes or abrupt break-aways like the ones that have usually greeted me in the rest of rural India. The air was thin, but pure and clear, just like how mountain air has forever been. No other vehicle was on the road for miles at an end, occasionally some riders on Royal Enfields and other bikes zipped by; we knew for a fact that none of them was heading to Umla though. Beyond the windows of the van, on all sides, there was an unending brown barren range of mountains, the trees became grass, the grass became patchy and then they were no more. We were travelling way above and beyond the timberline. All the mountain tops were covered in ice, teasingly like upturned icecream cones. The sky was a blue, so clear, bright and pale, something that the cities in India had rarely offered me. The vast horizon, dotted with tuft-white clouds had been like that ever since we had come here. The sun was looking down on all our activities, not scorching us, not tiring us. What a sight, all of this together- the Zanskar mountains, the sky, the scattered poplar trees and absolutely nobody, nothing else. Just there, in a valley, beyond the snaking roads of the mountain was Umla.

The side view of Umla- a nondescript hamlet of few nondescript households. They struggle t o make ends meet is overwhelming to say the least.

We could have easily missed it. The houses were in the same tone of grey-brown that the mountains behind them were. Neither were the houses all clustered together. They were scattered over many many acres, adjoining the sloping and terraced fields. The earth in the fields was freshly upturned, the a darker brown than the mountains, it was the sowing season. Nice! We eagerly stepped out the van, the air was much colder outside and a fresh gust of wind hit us. Before we knew, small, precious drops of snow were smoothly floating down. Ever so gracefully, so soft, and Kashmir came alive somehow. By the community hall- a single room with a wooden rack- by the road, a smiling woman greeted us and the volunteer from LEHO. She smiled, waved and muttered something fast in Ladakhi to the volunteer. The plump woman, dressed in a black overall, a belt at the hips, held a rosary in her other hand by the back, constantly rotating the beads. Soon a middle aged man, in trousers and a sweater joined her. He seemed to understand hindi, and acknowledged us with a nod. Few other villagers joined them. And we all got chatting, sitting in that room that just about managed to seat the 30 odd people.

Ladakh Environment and Health Organisation (LEHO) was started in 1991 by Ms Razia Sultan. They are involved in a range of projects in Ladakh ranging from helping villagers to build passive solar houses to encouraging them to practice natural methods of farming and marketing the same produce. In their improved greenhouses, where they aim at supplementing the agricultural produce of Ladakh by tapping solar energy during the non-farming months, they have employed nearly 1000 villagers; "green jobs" they are called. Through a Participatory Gaurantee System they are involved in organic certification of the villages in their outreach area. This helps in marketing their produce at fair prices and hence, ensuring the farmers a good income. It is quite a commendable effort and task because in Ladakh every village is facing problems of migration to the cities and a shortage of livelihood options as farming doesn't provide much. And that is how I found myself in Umla, a beneficiary village- to talk to the villagers there with a hope to understand what livelihood challenges they face and how do such mountain rural communities get by.

For a village where all the farming happens only between May to August, and any cow gives only a maximum of 5 litres of milk, there is a pressing need to find other sources of income. Kunchuk Paljor, the 52 year old man that I was in conversation with, was a workman with the Water Dept, so he was in-charge of checking the pipelines and irrigation in his village. Though he had a government job, there was no work for him too in the winters, when the water is frozen and there is only snow all around. Neither do government employment schemes like NREGA function properly in Umla nor do they have any private companies employing them. The women in the village did get together as a group and processed wheat as a part of LEHO's initiative; some of the others found jobs, food and income through LEHO's improved greenhouses. But the money was hardly anything to get by during the winters. The flashfloods of 2010 had even destroyed the single government institution in the village- a primary school. There are a couple of public transport buses that ply twice in a day, to reach whose bus-stop the villagers of Umla have to trek 6 kms. So all their children are sent away to boarding schools; the youth- only 3 of whom have seen a college- are all away too. Umla is a village of old people, middle aged farmers and no livelihood. 6-7 families have members in the Army and Paljor grimly informed me that 3 more families had migrated to Leh town to pursue some other careers. This in a village of, maybe, 20 households.

Mr Paljor, standing against the backdrop of Umla. The hamlet suffered heavily in the flashfloods of 2010 and it  has been a struggle since forever to maintain sustainable livelihoods in the harsh conditions of Ladakh

So remote, so cut off- just not from India, but from the rest of Ladakh too!-, so much at the mercy of only Government and NGO interventions. Stepping out of that community hall, the cold air hitting us once again, this time however what glistened more than the snow was the light in the eyes of the villager who told us of their plight and sought some hope in the form of some income-augmenting intervention. How were we to know that the same scene would greet us in all the other villages too. Like at Nang the very next day, where we met the family of Mr Stanzin, the village head. They were all farming together. One lady and a man were ploughing the land with the help of the local cattle animal, dzo. Just behind them was an old lady scattering the seeds, looking curiously at these urban people in hats and caps and jeans and jackets shooting questions about them and their village. Their small house behind could be on one of those home-stay catalogues advertising holidays in the Swiss Alps. A small and beautiful mud house with wooden roof, lined with a little straw by the sides. One slightly dirty glass window on the wall, with a potted flowering plant by the sill. A small shed behind the house- the ladakhi dry compost toilet and another small shed on the opposite side of the field to house the cattle . Of course the Ladakh landscape and this time the sound of a gurgling stream to boot! That day we were at Nang, courtesy LNP to understand how an artificial glacier had affected their lives and what changes could be made to the process to make their lifestyles any better. A very tough and tricky chance to suggest anything better, because the situation was atypical Umla, atypical any Ladakhi village- remote farming community seeking better lifestyle. A very tough and tricky job because the man behind the idea of artificial glaciers was thorough in his efforts to keep nature, its people and their livelihoods in sync at their best.

In the late 1970s, a period that I can not imagine for Ladakh in terms of how remote and unconnected it could have been, there were many starvation deaths in the district. The Leh Nutrition Project (LNP) was started then, to do something for the villages to the south of the River Indus. They started working on several food security and water harvesting initiatives to increase the food production in Leh. Mr Chewang Norphel, called the "Glacier Man", joined them in the following decade and touched the lives of many many villages in that region. He designed what is now known as the artificial glacier, a process of simply diverting a little of the melting glaciers during the summers, leaving them frozen during the winters and again redirecting them in late spring for the next farming season. Absolutely in tandem with the natural water cycle and not changing the course of the streams, the amount of water flowing into the villages and its fields is all controlled by the villagers. It helps provide water in a constant volume and to places that were earlier out of reach. This ensures that the farming cycles are not disturbed by unpredictable weather changes. Also, it recharges their groundwater and spring in the villages. As Stanzin had pointed out, their productivity had increased and they were assured of a fixed yield. Moreover, these villagers themselves had the decentralized power to control the supply of water.

The visit to Nang village was preceded by a small guided tour of the artificial glacier at Nang, by the man himself, Mr Norphel. He has been showered by the Government with accolades, titles and covered by enough media houses as a pioneer and a hero. However, at 78 years, well past his working term at LNP he was as enthusiastic as a child to take us through his masterpiece. The passion that he displayed in explaining how the glacier worked, painstakingly pointing out every lever and canal in the system was just an inspiration. To see how keen he was in taking questions and brusquely walking across those tricky rocks and slippery slopes at his age was to take a knock on any little ego one possessed. He did not have any compulsions to be with us, he was not even an active member at LNP any longer. But to see how his eyes shone, how his feet took to the mountains and how his heart spoke was a lesson in modesty and magnanimity. Topped with the experience that this was a classroom at over 3800 metres above sea level, with an idealism to know more about a people of our own country- such a beautiful confluence of man, mountain and mind- this was indeed one of my greatest learning experiences ever!

Mr Norphel, explaining to the group how the water levels of the outlet is adjustable through the iron gates and locks. To just watch him stride the mountains and recognize every nook of the mountains and valley, is an inspirational experience indeed.

There were some more things that I had the opportunity to notice and learn in those two days, that made it a journey with each step quite as a unique event in itself. The challenges that we sought to deliberate with the villagers, were typically what an "outsider" might see as a challenge. Wondering what they did for festivals, marriages or emergencies that required a lot of money at one go, I asked them how did their meagre income support such events. I was told that it was not a chance for individual resplendence or worry, it was a matter of the community getting together. The entire village got together to celebrate Losar, the Ladakhi New Year. The able people in the village trekked miles to fetch medical help for the persons in need. They took turns in farming everybody's land. Everything was a community act- right from organic certification to caking the mud walls of a passive solar heated house. "Then it didn't matter if you had one cow and your neighbour had a dzo. The village always pooled its resources for all its people.", Paljor had put it. How beautiful, how economical and definitely, how harmonious! Between the passing poplar trees and the darting white clouds, the insignificance of Nang's and Umla's existence in the material world was completely overshadowed by the big lessons those village-schools gave me. In our fast paced and exceedingly independent worlds, it is only a privilege to be an exception that is undoubtedly more human! Still more of Ladakh to come...

What could be easily out of the picture postcard from Swiss Alps is but the humble Nang Valley, home to Nang's artificial glacier in Ladakh.