Caught in India-China clashes, Ladakh’s nomadic herders fear for future

Constant military patrols near the Indo-China border in Ladakh have shrunk pastures and are extinguishing an ancient way of life.

Chushul, Ladakh, India – The bubbling sound of water boiling on the stove and the aroma of spinach dal fill the air in Tashi Angmo’s kitchen as she rolls dough to make a type of Tibetan bread.

“This is a dish which we call timok in Ladakh and tingmo across the border in Tibet,” she says as she prepares the apparatus to steam the dough she has rolled into balls resembling dumplings. “It’s a delicious meal after a hard day’s work.”

Angmo, 51, lives in Chushul, a village which sits at an altitude of 4,350 metres (14,270 feet) in India’s Ladakh, one of the highest regions in the world, known for its pristine rivers and lakes, high valleys and mountains and clear skies. Chushul also lies about 8 kilometres (5 miles) from India’s Line of Actual Control with China, the disputed, de facto border between the two countries.

“I was around 11 years old when I realised that my family and I lived very close to the Chinese border. Back then, we used to be a family of shepherds, and I often went near the border with my father, to take our sheep herding,” Angmo says.

She now works as a labourer doing a variety of tasks from cleaning roads to helping with construction and cooking meals for other workers, for the Border Roads Organisation – the Indian Defence Ministry’s initiative to maintain roads in the subcontinent’s border areas.

“We even used to trade apricots and barley which grew in our village with the Chinese shepherds. In return, we brought back chicken, some Chinese cookies and also teapots!” she exclaims and points to the teapots which she still keeps in her kitchen cabinet.

Even the Sino-India war