ASIAN ALPINE E-NEWS
Issue No 72. August 2020

George Band and Joe Brown at the Kangchenjunga Base Camp 1955 – Photo Royal Geographical Society“The Himalayan News 7” from India

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The Himalayan NewsThe Himalayan News
August 2020

The Himalayan

A Newsletter of The Himalayan

AUGUST 2020 NO 7
SHERPAS AND THEIRBUDDHISM

Jim Wilson

KANGCHENJUNGA
THE LAST GREATMOUNTAINTHE GOOD SHEPHERDS

Sankar Sridhar

Mick Conefrey

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Dear Readers,
We welcome you to the seventh issue of The Himalayan News.
The COVID 19 pandemic has been sweeping across the planet for the last six months and causing
immense hardship and devastation. The entire spring season in the Himalaya has been washed out
and indications are that the peak autumn season will also be in jeopardy. Guides, porters, lodge
owners, airlines, mountaineering and trekking companies, hotels have all been badly hit. Many havealready been forced to close down their businesses and establishments.
We can only hope and pray that this pandemic ends soon and a suitable vaccine enters the market
to arrest the spiralling growth of this disease in these unprecedented times.
In this our seventh issue, Jim Wilson, who was part of Ed Hillary’s team and worked with him formany years, pens an essay on the Sherpas of the Solukhumbu and their Buddhism with his
fascinating personal experiences when he was in the Khumbu in the sixties.
Acclaimed author Mick Conefrey, who wrote two books on Everest and K2, now completes thetrilogy with Kangchenjunga – The Last Great Mountain. Meticulously researched, Kangchenjunga
promises to become a collector’s item for all mountain book lovers.
Award winning photographer Sankar Sridhar who has spent many years documenting mountaincommunities brings us a photo essay on the Bakarwals of Kashmir and the threats to their lifestyleand migratory routes.
The Himalayan has also made a humble effort to assist the Sherpa community in Darjeeling , shut inby serial lockdowns that has devasted their lives and livelihood. In an attempt to bring back asemblance of routine to the lives of the children, study material necessary for beginning a newsemester in school, were donated to children from Nursery to Class XII. This was done inconjunction with IMF Eastern Zone and the Sherpa Mountaineering and Trekking Welfare
Association (Darjeeling).
From the desk of Rupamanjari Biswas: I am grateful to our Editor, Sujoy Das, for overcoming his
pandemic fatigue and putting this issue together for a timely publication.

Sujoy Das
Rupamanjari Biswas
Editors

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The Himalayan NewsThe Himalayan

August 2020SHERPAS AND THEIR BUDDHISM
Jim Wilson

Awaiting the morning prayers at Thyangboche monastery[This is an abbreviated version of a chapter in my book ‘Journey to the Centre of My Being’ Zen
Publications, Mumbai, 2019]
In March to May 1963 I was part of Ed
Hillary’s first school building expedition to the
Khumbu region of Nepal. This gave me myfirst real encounter with a religion other than
Christianity. Sherpas are Tibetan Buddhists,
and, though intensity of belief and practicevaried as widely amongst them then as it did
amongst New Zealand Christians, theirreligion infused every aspect of their lives andthoughts in ways strikingly different from thesociety I had grown up in.
In New Zealand, in those days, people were
mostly either religious, and dour and intenseabout it; or indifferent; or hostile to religion,and dour and intense about it. Here in the
Solu Khumbu I was amongst people who wereserious about their religion but in a
wonderfully relaxed way. Ceremonies were

held, and lamas (monks) came and blessed
proceedings and houses and people, for every
important stage in the yearly cycle and every
important milestone in people’s lives. But,
instead of the fiercely quiet and reverent
atmosphere I was used to in Presbyterian
Christian services, Sherpa religious occasions
were laid back noisy affairs. People came andwent at will, and children were allowed to run
around and talk freely, none of which
disturbed the lamas or lay people in theslightest. And, because they were not forced
to be quiet and still, children and adults were
far less fidgety and obtrusive than in a solemn
ceremony in church. Nor did this make theceremonies less impressive; on the contrary itenhanced them. I loved it.

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One of the many good things about Ed’s aid
projects was that he always wanted them to
fit into Sherpa or Nepali ways of doing things
as much as possible. So he always had lamas,and on special occasions the Rinpoche(reincarnate Head Monk) of Thyangboche
Gompa, (Monastery) bless the building or
bridge or water-supply. In this, as in all things,
Ed was advised by Mingma Tsering, his Sirdar.
Mingma was religious in a relaxed Sherpa
way. I learnt not to talk to him for the first halfhour or so each morning for he was chanting
mantra.

The Rinpoche of Thyangboche at the opening of
Thami school

One incident above all others during this firstencounter has always for me typified the
Sherpa attitude to religion. I was with fellow
New Zealander Murray Ellis, and two of myclosest Sherpa friends, Phu Dorje and Pemba
Tarke. We were trying to increase the flow ofa mountain spring preparatory to piping waterfrom it to a holding tank we’d had built in thevillage of Khunde. With crowbars and shovels

we prised and dug our way deep into thehillside, jousting with huge boulders as we
dislodged them from above. Just before wefinished for the day I spotted a small toad
trembling at the back of our hole. I pointed itout to Phu Dorje and Pemba Tarke. “Na ramro(not good) Jim, that is the god of the spring”
they said solemnly.
All Sherpas love teasing, these two most of all,so at first I was sure they were joking. But
they kept perfectly straight faces as they said
we must take the toad to Khunde Major (theelected head of the village council) and seek
his advice on what to do, for if we had indeed
disturbed the god of the spring he might stop
the flow completely. I began to get alarmed,
for what we’d done to the spring might dothat anyway. So I picked up the poor wee
cowering beastie and we went to Khunde
Major’s house, edging cautiously past his
particularly ferocious Tibetan mastiff and in
his door.
Khunde Major heard us out quietly, looked
carefully at my friend the toad, andpronounced him indeed the god of Khunde
spring. Help!!! - what to do??? I asked aghast.
“Ah” said Khunde Major, “You must take thegod to your camp tonight, keep him warm,
and tomorrow we will perform puja (religious
ceremony) and put him back in his spring.” If
there was a twinkle in his eye, and/or a winkto him from the terrible two, I didn’t catch it. I
was so scared the toad would succumb to thefierce frost that I slept with him inside mysleeping bag. To my intense relief he wasalive next morning, and even seemed quite
happy. Khunde Major and several otherdignitaries and lamas, and of course Phu Dorjeand Pemba Tarke, accompanied me and toadback to the spring, which to my relief was still
flowing strongly. In a ceremony as punctuatedby laughter as by mantra we restored the god
to his proper place.
Walking back with Phu Dorje and Pemba
Tarke curiosity was consuming me. Did they
and/or Khunde Major and the others really

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believe this was the god of the spring, or was
this an elaborate trick on me? What was all
the laughter about? To me, their answer
epitomizes the healthiest attitude to religion I
have come across. “Ah Jim” they said, grinning
engagingly, “this being god of spring, we notpuja doing, then spring drying, ekdam na
ramro (very bad). This not being god of spring,no harm puja doing, and good time having.”
Surely the best of win-win situations.
I remember only the gist of their replies, ofcourse, not their exact words. And since I
understood little Nepali and no Sherpa theyspoke to me in Sherpa English. I became agreat fan of Sherpa English and used it notmockingly but admiringly and for practicalreasons, as did Ed when conversing with
Mingma who I think was creator, and certainly
was master, of this language. Practical as
always, Mingma scorned tenses andirregularities of English English and reduced all
verbs to present participles. “I yesterdaycoming” is just as precise in meaning as “Icame yesterday”, and the formula can easily
and accurately be used in “I now coming” or “I
tomorrow coming”. Ed, who was as bad at
languages as I am, quickly learned Sherpa
English from Mingma, and it was a treat tohear the two of them conversing in a
combination of it and mangled Nepali. It was
equally a treat to see the looks ofbewilderment on passing English English
speakers, who couldn’t understand theinterchanges but could see that Ed andMingma understood each other perfectly.
Several weeks later two Sherpas we’d left
guarding base camp on the mountain
Taweche came hurtling into our village camplate at night, clothes torn and legs bruisedfrom their reckless descent. “Yeti, yeti” theygasped. “Yeti hearing.” Next day I consulted
Phu Dorje and Pemba Tarke again. “Do you
believe it was a yeti?” I asked. “Do you believe
yetis exist?” I suspect they secretly sighed at
this literal-minded simpleton worrying about
what does or doesn’t exist when, according to
Buddhism, all life is an elaborate illusion

anyway. But they answered, in similar vein to
their god of the spring approach. “Ah Jim, we
yetis believing, very careful not annoying
them. No yetis being, no harm doing. We yetis
not believing then yeti seeing, ekdam na
ramro.”The yeti scalp at Khumjung Gompa

I was delighted with both these answers. They
helped release me from years of Christianinduced worries about what is true belief, andphilosophy-induced worries about what exists
and what doesn’t. As time went on I was tobecome more and more immersed in
Hindu/Buddhist notions of maya - the varied
and fascinating but not ultimately real displayof the underlying energy of the universe which infused Phu Dorje’s and Pemba Tarke’s
attitude to yetis and gods. But though at thistime I didn’t fully understand it I surely lovedit.
It is hard now to be sure what struck me thisfirst time and what I know now from over 50
years of frequent visits to Sherpa land andmuch study of and teaching about Buddhism
and Hinduism. But certainly another aspect
did strike me forcefully on this first visit. Againa particular incident highlights it. We were
working on Pangboche school when one of
our expedition Sherpas recognized a very
distinctive and colourful woollen jersey being
worn by one of the village elders at thebuilding site. The jersey belonged to a Swiss
climber; he and his Sherpa companion had
fallen to their deaths while descending fromthe first ascent of Pumori, a very difficult peak

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near Everest. They had been buried together
on the glacier at the foot of the mountain,
and our Sherpa had been on that expedition
and at that burial. He told Mingma, who told
Ed, and together they alerted the villageelders.
Confronted with their accusation the man
broke down and admitted he had reopened
the graves and taken the jersey, and also the
Sherpa’s down jacket. Secretly I sympathizedwith the man; after all, jersey and jacket were
no further use to their previous owners. But
everyone else seemed appalled at what they
regarded as sacrilege. They debated theappropriate punishment for the miscreant,and decided - I kid you not - on a public
telling-off by the elders and by Ed. I have toadmit this punishment completely broke theman up. He sobbed and clung to his wife. But
it seemed to me very mild given how seriously
the offence was viewed. Afterwards the man
was accepted back into the community withno further consequences other than his own
conscience and - and here’s the rub - his
beliefs about the consequences of his actions
on the rest of this life and on his future lives.
This was my first insight into the way belief inrebirth and karma affects every aspect of
Buddhist and Hindu life. I came to understandit more deeply later. At this stage I saw only asimple but very powerful application of it. The
community had to act, partly I think because
we, and especially Ed, were there, partly to
redress the slur on their community that oneof their members had incurred. But they felt
no need to judge or punish harshly, because
what the law of karma says is that every
action, good or bad, has its own inevitableconsequences. What the man had done would
affect him in this life and, if serious enough,for many lives to come. Belief in karma was
far more effective in discouraging wrongdoing than any human social or legal
regulations and prohibitions could be.
I’m not sure how much I romanticize this
aspect of Buddhist and Hindu societies. And it

can and does have very harmful as well as
positive effects. But I am sure that, bycontrast with judgemental attitudes I’dencountered too often in Christian circles, I
found Sherpa and Hindu societies much moretolerant. I thought then, and think now, that
belief in karma has a lot to do with this. No
need to worry about people getting away withbad deeds; the law of karma is inexorable,
and the consequences of those deeds will beborne by the doers at some stage.

Painting on a rock near Thami

Yet another aspect of Sherpa religion thatstruck me forcibly during this time was the
splendid colourful noisy whackiness of it all.
Presbyterian churches and ceremonies wereaustere and bare to put it mildly, part of aferocious attempt to be as little as possible
like Roman Catholics with their rituals andimages. Suddenly now, at religious
ceremonies, I was surrounded by astonishingmasks and images and wall paintings andthanka (paintings on cloth) of the Buddha, of
Bodhisattva (enlightened beings), of great

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Buddhist teachers and saints, and of
innumerable goddesses and gods, somebenign, some ferocious. Nor were my eyes
only overwhelmed - all my senses were. The
lamas in their ochre robes and amazing
headgear swung incense burners to add to thefragrance of smoky clothes and humanbodies. They chanted rhythmic mantra,
punctuated by long thunder-blasts from hugecopper and brass Tibetan horns, a highsyncopated melody on clarinet-like reed
instruments, and booming drums and clanging
cymbals. I was touched on the head inblessing by lamas, and ran my fingers along
the raised letters of huge copper prayer
wheels. And morsels of chang (rice beer) andfood, after being offered to the goddesses
and gods, were placed in our hands and we
sucked them into our mouths.

At the Dumji Festival, Khumjung

So much for the five senses. What of themind? Aha! Buddhism, as I learned later,
distrusts the mind. The mind creates illusory
concepts and objects out of the furious flux ofreality, most dangerously the concept of an
enduring individual self. So best of all, for me,
was that my mind was not given the tiniest
toehold in all this. Even the chanted mantra,
though using intelligible words, were notintelligible to me (and possibly not to manyother than the lamas). They were for me puresound, bypassing my troublesome mind andvibrating instead my whole being.
I should add that because of, rather than
despite, its distrust of the mind, Buddhism

takes the mind very seriously. The lamaschanting the mantra would not only havememorized them, they would have studied
their meaning and history, and engaged in
intricate intellectual debates about them andthe beliefs underpinning them. And as I was todiscover later, and admire greatly, theBuddhist philosophical tradition thatdeveloped in India was amongst the greatest
and most subtle intellectual achievements ofhumankind. But for me this initial and hugely
influential contact with Buddhism mainly
bypassed my mind and overwhelmed instead,
and wonderfully, the rest of my being.
All this was enhanced by the way in which
we were made welcome at all ceremonies.
Nobody gave a thought to whether webelieved or not. I doubt the notion that nonbelievers might somehow dilute or wreck aceremony has ever entered a Sherpa head.
Partly, I think, this is because they trust thepower of their rituals so securely that it
wouldn’t occur to them that some people notbelieving in them as they do could have any
effect. But, probably more importantly, in
Buddhism and Hinduism what you believe or
don’t believe is really your business alone.
Unless your beliefs lead to actions which
adversely affect others, there is no need forothers to try to change them. If, through thelaw of karma, they adversely affect you, thatis your look out. Moreover, against the vast
background of countless deaths and rebirths,
it is clearly understood that different people
will be at different stages of spiritual progress,
and therefore not only will have, but will
need, different beliefs. This understanding
encourages great tolerance of others’ views,
or, put another way, a strong inhibition
against wanting to convert others to one’s
own way of thinking. The contrast with themissionary zeal of many Christians was very
vivid.
So my new-found Sherpa friends, though
happy to share their beliefs and rituals withme, had no desire whatever to convert me to
Buddhism. If they thought about it at all I’m

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sure their thought would be ‘no doubt Jim has
the beliefs and habits appropriate for him in
this particular rebirth of his.’ They may also
have thought, ‘but how nice that he seems torespect and enjoy participating in ours’ - but
only if they’d had unfortunate encounterswith zealous Christians; I think otherwise
they’d simply have taken this for granted.
Consequently we were not urged, but weremade to feel naturally welcome, to join in any
ceremonies. Not only that, we could request,or have suggested to us, ceremonies
specifically for us. I’ve already mentioned that
Ed and Mingma would always get projects weworked on blessed by lamas, preferably the
Rimpoche of Thyangboche - deeply moving
occasions when we would line up with
Sherpas to file past and be blessed by the
Rimpoche.
But we also, on this first trip, had a special
ceremony at Pangboche Gompa to placate thegod of Taweche, the awesome mountainrearing above the village. This god was
represented in the gompa by a mask as
ferocious as ever I’ve seen, highly appropriate
to the mountain as it turned out. With due
ceremony, and with our natural trepidation at
attempting so difficult a peak both heightenedand somehow also eased by the solemn yet
noisy and colourful ritual, we appeased thisfearsome being with mantra and offerings.
Subsequently, elated by our efforts but
defeated by the last dangerous 150 feet of thesummit ridge, I jokingly chided Phu Dorje andPemba Tarke about the ritual failing to bringus success. They were never stumped for a

reply. “Ah Jim” they grinned, “puja all safely
back getting, not summit getting – that wedoing, not doing.”

Masked dancer at Khumjung monastery

We still had the mountain Kangtega toattempt. This time we had no pre-assault
ritual; Kangtega, by the route by which we
tackled it, was too far from any village or
gompa to have a god in residence to placate.
And this time not only did we all return safely
from the mountain - just - we also succeededin reaching the summit. What price ritual
then? Get thee behind me, oh sceptical mind.

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KANGCHENJUNGA - THE LAST GREAT MOUNTAIN
Mick Conefrey

George Band and Joe Brown at the Kangchenjunga Base Camp 1955 – Photo Royal Geographical Society

At around two in the afternoon on
Wednesday 25th May 1955, a pair of young
British climbers, George Band and Joe Brown,
found themselves sitting on an icy ledge at the
top of a steep slope. Back home George was ageology student who had recently graduatedfrom Cambridge, Joe a general builder who
had left school at fourteen. If it hadn’t been
for climbing, they might never have met but
right now they were partners, the spearheadof the British Kangchenjunga Reconnaissance
Expedition.
While they gobbled down toffees and swiggedback luke warm lemon cordial, the wind blew
flurries of snow over their heads. At around27,800 ft they were undoubtedly the highest
men in the world but they were still some 350
vertical feet short of their goal. And that was a
big problem because they were way beyond
their turnaround time.

If everything had gone according to plan, theywould have been on their way down. Timewas running out and so was their oxygen.
They had just two hours left, enough to reachthe summit but not enough to descend safely.
If they went on, there was no guarantee ofsuccess and they risked having to sleep out inthe open with nothing but the clothes they
were wearing to protect them from thefreezing cold.
So what should they do – stick or twist? Carryon up or retreat to hand on the baton to theirteammates in the second summit party? Overthe last five decades there had been four
previous expeditions to Kangchenjunga, thethird highest peak in the world. Nine men had
died, trying to achieve what Everest leader Sir
John Hunt called “the greatest feat in world
mountaineering.” Were they willing to risk

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everything for fame and glory or was it finallytime to turn back?
What happened next is an extraordinary story
in itself but it’s also the final chapter in amuch longer saga which goes back to thebeginning of the twentieth century. It’s a talewhose cast includes some of the mosttalented, most driven and occasionally mosteccentric characters in the history ofmountaineering: men like Aleister Crowley,
the occultist nicknamed the ‘Great Beast 666’,
Paul Bauer, the fanatical German climber andNazi official, and Gunther Oscar Dyhrenfurth,
the mountaineer known to his friends as GOD.

Crossing a crevasse, 1955

Aleister Crowley, the man dubbed ‘The
Wickedest Man in the World’ by the Britishpress, was the first to have a crack at it,leading a team of Swiss climbers. Crowley had
made the first attempt on K2 a few years
earlier and had famously become so ill withmalaria that he started threatening to shoothis team-mates. Kangchenjunga went betterbut ended with an accident which killed four
members of his team and prompted a very
bitter and acrimonious controversy.
In the late nineteen twenties, a team ofGerman climbers led by Paul Bauer, made twoquite amazing attempts, in which they spent
weeks literally trying to tunnel their way
through ice-formations on the North East
Ridge. They didn’t get anywhere close to thesummit and only narrowly escaped with theirlives, but their 100% commitment won thempraise from climbers all around the world. In
between Bauer’s two expeditions, aninternational team under Gunter Dyhrenfurthmade an attempt from the other side of themountain in Nepal. It climaxed in a hugeavalanche which cost Sherpa Chettan his life
and almost wiped out the whole climbing
party.

For the last three years, I’ve been researching
the climbing history of Kangchenjunga for mybook The Last Great Mountain, talking tosurvivors of the first ascent and tracking down
diaries, letters and other documentary
evidence. It is easy to see why so many
climbers became so obsessed with ‘Kanch’.
Unlike Everest and K2, it is relatively
accessible and is visible from the hill towns ofNorthern India. Initially it was thought to be
the highest mountain in the world and evenwhen British surveyors discovered that
Everest was about a thousand feet higher andK2 about eighty feet its superior,Kangchenjunga was still regarded as a great, if
not the greatest challenge in Himalayan
mountaineering. It’s combination of extreme
altitude, climbing difficulty and appalling
weather made its ascent a virtually impossible
task.
The Icefall, 1955

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When Joe Brown and George Band arrived on
the mountain with an all British team in 1955,
no-one was sure whether Kangchenjunga
could be climbed at all. The expedition was
led by Charles Evans, who had come within awhisker of being the first man to summit
Everest two years earlier. He was aninspirational leader who had learnt his lessons
well after spending much of the previous five
years in the Himalayas but he knew he had ajob on.
At 24, Joe Brown was the ‘Theo Walcott’ of his
team, utterly different from the usual
Oxbridge educated elite who dominated
British mountaineering. Some in the climbing
establishment were very dubious about his
inclusion, but Charles Evans was willing totake a risk and as the expedition progressed,
he was more and more sure that he’d madethe right choice. Joe ate more than anyone
else, smoked more than anyone else andspoke with such a strong accent that the
Sherpas thought he was from another country
but he proved himself to be an exceptional
all-round mountaineer.

Charles Evans’s team overcame altitude
sickness, avalanches and freak storms to getthemselves into a position where Joe Brown
and George Band could strike out for thesummit. Right at the end of their attempt,
they came up against Kangchenjunga’s
equivalent of the Hillary Step on Everest, a
steep wall of rock just under the summit
which at just under 28,000 ft looked like an
impossible climb. Fortunately, Joe Brown was
up to it, using his favourite technique of‘hand-jamming’ to work his way up a narrowcrack in the rock.

The Sherpa team of the 1955 expedition

When he and George Band eventually got to
the top, following an agreement with the
Maharajah of Sikkim, they left the final snowcone on the summit ridge untrodden. It wasan amazing achievement: the last great
mountain to be climbed, the first time a pairof British mountaineers had stood on top of
an 8000m peak. Back home in Manchester,
Joe Brown, got a typically effervescent
reception from his mates at the legendaryRock and Ice club: “No man is a hero in his
own house. The Rock and Ice were like
brothers, how would you expect them toreact? They’re British, the most you’d get was‘well done lad’. I got no free drinks.”

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THE GOOD SHEPHERDS
Sankar Sridhar
Each year, as the snow melts, streams brim over, and meadows return to life, Bakarwal pastoralists
begin a long march from the lower reaches of Jammu to the alpine pastures of Kashmir.
These keepers of sheep – which is what their name translates to – remain on the move from May
and until autumn, when the wilderness is ablaze in all hues of red yellow and rust. Their 'territory', if
we could call it that, covers a host of different terrain – from the Kashmir Valley, the Kishtwar region,
Zanskar and even Spiti. But the tribe that is divided by mountain passes during migrations, is unitedby their lifestyle: living in makeshift shelters, fattening their flock for a winter many months away,
while also protecting them from rustling and predation.
While their time in the high Himalayan valleys may seem like the perfect idea of a vacation, it's far
from it. Protecting the flock against wild animals, timing the move from one valley to another toperfection, treks over several days to restock rations, weathering everything the elements throw atthem – the list of challenges are long. And yet, by compulsion or choice, it's an affair undertaken
annually, and completed well, thanks to the Bakarwals' survival skills, honed over time and passed
on from one generation to the next.
Today though, new and more fearsome odds face this nomadic community. Roads now run throughmany sections of the migratory routes, and speeding vehicles often exact a heavy toll on the flocks.
Meadows that once were the sole reserve of Bakarwals have now turned hotspots where the only
herds welcomed are those of tourists. The weather, too, they say, and we know, is turning stranger
by the year.
As the younger generation is weaned away, some thankfully through education, and others sadly by
the glitter and spurious prospects promised by towns and cities, it'll be only a matter of time before
the meadows and valleys lose their zero carbon footprint visitors, and we lose the indigenous
knowledge they possess.
This truth isn't lost on the Bakarwal but in the spirit of true pastoralists, they refuse to mope on afuture just because it looks grim.
Their attitude stems partly from the daily hazards their occupation comes with, and partly from a
resignation to fate. And between these two truths, they are left with only the option of adapting andhoping for the best.
So they're fine running the gauntlet and the modern additions to them to get the peace they're used
to in the high valleys. As Pervez, a Bakarwal elder, put it: "We might as well enjoy the peace as longas we are able to."12

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A storm brews overhead as a couple of bakarwal make their way back to camp.

In valleys not connected by road, the Bakarwal have only natural predation to contend with. The Bakarwali
dogs manage the wolves well, and a fire and well-aimed stones keep the hungry bears away.

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Rations, utensils and children too young to walk long distances are carried on horseback, while live and fragile
cargo - like chicken - make the journey in the nomads’ arms. This makes sure they weather the journey welland remain in a condition to lay eggs during the Bakarwals’ journey away from civilization.

The first signs of spring appear as tufts of grass on mountainsides, but snow on the valley floor means the
sheep have slender pickings while on the move. The Bakarwal begin their day early to take advantage of lower
temperatures, which allow them to walk longer distances without tiring. On snowy stretches, a lot of thought
is put into how much to walk, how much rest to give to the sheep, so they don't grow weak from hunger, orworse, die.

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Winds are often a force to reckon with, though above the treeline, it’s difficult to capture their ferocity. The
flapping shawl comes to my rescue in this image. For these brothers, as it is for most bakarwal, a thick woollen
shawl, offers protection from more than just winds. The warp and weft also make it heavily water resistant,allowing these pastoralists to spend entire days hunkered down in the open while their sheep graze.

Shearing is an early summer activity, usually carried out in the mid-reaches of the mountains. While mostBakarwal can shear sheep, they usually employ the services of community members who specialise in thisactivity. Getting the coat out in one piece is the gold standard. And an expert shearer can lighten the load off
as many as 40 sheep in a day, with a zero nick-or-cut track record.

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