Seeking a Shepherd

 Himayalan Ibex -- Skyin -- Capra sibirica

We are searching for someone who loves walking in mountains to carry the shepherd work through this summer in Tar village in Ladakh. This is something that people in the village consistently identify as a need, and specifically they approve of the idea of a friend or acquaintance of ours coming to fulfill this role for a time.

If you or someone you know would seriously consider it, living with folks here, eating wholesome food from this land, bringing bundles of wild fodder back all summer for winter storage, please be in touch with us. The best time to come would be before June so we can overlap with you, and we would need you to stay for at least two or three months.

village sheep in the yok ma (lower village)

Lots to learn, an amazing place to explore.  Homestays are available for less than the price of a hostel, with skillful and willing teachers in the crafts of the village.  If you come before June, we can get you started on language.  Plenty of flexibility to this job, but a serious commitment is needed, spending most days taking the herd from the village and tending them in the mountains and high pastures where they graze.  The village is at around 11,000 ft (3230 meters) elevation.

The slopes are steep and the footing is challenging.  The days are not terribly long, but it will take time for anyone's body to transition to this altitude.  Expect camping conditions and amenities -- the village is not on any road.  Living here is inexpensive compared to the US, and if expenses for the flight, passport, and visa are a limiting factor we can certainly find the needed funds among our networks.  India is newly offering a one-year e-visa which makes that process much faster and easier.

We're delighted at the idea of introducing someone new to our friends, these amazing people in the village. If you have a serious interest please comment here or find me as "Jason M Chandler" on facebook.

Please see the last two blog posts (Ice Melting and Returning) and the rest of the blog for more context and the reasons we make this ask.

Abi Yangchan Lhadzom, spinning sheep's wool

Spring Trek - Images

Ice melting

This past month was an ice-melting moon.  So much of the snow we saw everywhere is now dry rock as the first sliver of this spring moon waxes, and the stream has opened up a great deal, swelling with water.  This is the second clear evening we see this bright crescent, shining.

Manure work is almost done: another full day in the hot sun today, carrying baskets with people who know how to deal with their shit.

As I write, the last bare tip of the crescent slides behind a mountain that towers dark and purple to the southwest, where the ibex who were grazing near our work site today climbed high above us and disappeared into impossible cliffs.

The first stars are coming out between dark gnarled bud-rich branches of apricot.

~~~

There is a generation aging out in this village and they are still doing the majority of the everyday work to keep the animals well, the fields fertile, and the food flowing.  They have seen fifty, sixty, or seventy years.  They climb trees and save seed and plow fields and cut wood and carry water.  They know a great deal about how to live and how to work and enjoy life and do things simply and well.  And before mandatory education -- most of it in large institutions where children are beaten as punishment for unruliness -- teens were learning in their minds and bodies the ways to bring life to the village with their grandparents, in the fields, with the trees, around the hearth, and up in the valleys and shepherds' stone huts in the mountains.  There were great herds of sheep and goats up there each summer, herds that brought a renewing, abundant fertility to the old stone-terraced fields of barley, wheat, and peas in the village.  Now more and more of the village's elders are abandoning fields, lacking the labor and the animal manure to bring them through properly.

So, here's our position.  We know that the labor of just the two of us does a great deal to make these folks' lives and work more possible and more joyful.  And we know that the cultural interchange here with student groups and other guests has been rich and fruitful -- we've helped to facilitate this.  And in this time of returning to the village we feel our lives intertwined all the more with these people and this place.  We feel certain that we will return again, and we feel without a doubt that people want that, and want us to contribute to the life of Tar.  We know that we can contribute all the more if we bring friends with us when we return.

Should we now pursue a course of action in which Caitlin and I put significant energy into helping to bring visitors here to Tar?  The best kind would be those who will stay for months, do labor, learn language, potentially return in years to come, and thus not just take pictures of a place, not just go gather an experience for themselves, but actually help provide for the nourishment and revitalization of this place, and collectively do so in a long-lasting way.

With more labor and more people, more animals and more manure is possible -- healthy for the fields.  The Tarpa could afford once again to grow their herds of sheep and goats, bringing fiber and fertility.  With more homestay money flowing in, the village's young people would feel less pressure to leave the village to earn money, and with the draw of a steady multi-cultural presence in the village in the summertime, they would see more advantage in staying.  All our friends among the young people of Tar regret being away from the village so much -- this would give them another reason to stay.

What do you think?  Please respond in the comments below, and help us spread the word especially to young people that this type of opportunity is possible.  The likely start date is spring of 2021.

Photo by Mira van Dongen