ABOVE: a group of Zanskar-pa (people from the Zanskar valley) walk along the icy surface of the Zanskar River in front of a frozen waterfall that descends from a cliff below Nerak, a small village located at an altitude of around 3,300 metres. The Zanskar valley is situated in the Indian Himalaya in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. The old Kingdom of Zanskar is dominated by three large glacial valleys that contain the Zanskar, Lungnak and Stod rivers, covering an area of around 7,000 square kilometres and supporting a population of about 14,000 people scattered across the valleys in 25 or so small villages. The region is one of the most isolated in the whole of the Himalaya. Between October and April, the high mountain passes that the locals use to get from place to place are blocked with deep snow, making it almost impossible to get into or out of the region. It’s at this time that the Zanskar-pa take to the Zanskar River, which cuts through the surrounding mountains via a deep gorge. The river usually freezes over at the end of January, remaining frozen for about a month. Traditionally, the locals used this opportunity to transport their well-regarded yak butter to the markets in Leh, the old capital of the neighbouring Ladakh region – a 120-kilometre journey that typically took around a week. Today, only a few dozen people still use the frozen river purely to ferry butter down the valley. They are joined by students, who use it as a means of returning to their schools after the winter holidays. Many younger residents have also found work as tour guides and porters taking foreign visitors on treks along the Chadar, as the river is known locally. Often, both students and guides will carry an extra pack of butter with them as they walk along the river to sell at the market



ABOVE: two men in traditional Zanskar costume climb over the rocky sides of the valley. The river doesn’t always freeze consistently, and when the Zanskar-pa reach a less-frozen patch, they climb up the sides of the gorge in order to avoid the possibility of falling into the frigid water. The goncha is a traditional costume that takes the form of a calf-length smock made out of yak wool that’s tied around the waist with a cummerbund. The everyday male version is usually dyed maroon (traditionally using a vegetable dye extracted from the madder plant), but other colours and styles are worn on special occasions, and by wealthier Zanskar-pa. Most locals continue to slide across the ice wearing flat-soled boots rather than crampons, which they believe can upset the river’s spirits.



ABOVE: porters and students trekking along the frozen Zanskar River gather around a fire lit inside a cave. The Zanskar-pa use caves to shelter from the intense cold – temperatures often drop to around –30°C. The porters are cooking skiu, a starch-based dish that looks like ear-shaped pasta, and spiced vegetables.



ABOVE: A woman spins yak wool in her house in the village of Nerak. Because the villagers spend long periods of time cut off from the rest of the world, they are largely self-sufficient, only needing to exchange their butter for staples that they can’t grow themselves, such as rice and tea. Today, commercial butter is available at about a quarter of the price of the yak butter produced in the Zanskar valley, but the latter is still popular in Leh thanks to its unique flavour and high fat content. The butter is used to make many regional specialities, including butter tea, a hot drink made by combining salt, yak butter, tea leaves and water, and also as lamp fuel. Yaks are kept by many of the families in the Zanskar region and are central to the Zanskari way of life.

Not only is their milk used to make dairy products, but their wool is also used to make clothes, their excrement is used as both manure and fuel, their flesh is occasionally used for meat, and, when the snow has melted, they are used to plough the fields. During the winter, the yaks are kept beneath the family’s house and fed on hay. During the warmer months, the women and children travel away from the village to take the yaks to their summer pastures. The villagers also own and farm nearby land and, because the area is mountainous and a semi-desert, most of the farming takes place on terraces or alluvial fans (areas where a fast-flowing stream rushes down a very steep cliff or slope before hitting a flat plain and saturating the surrounding ground).

The heavy snows that isolate the region in winter are vital for farming – without them, there would be very little water, as the Himalaya prevent warm, moist air from rising up and across into the Zanskar and Ladakh regions (although, during the past few years, more of the monsoon rains have managed to climb over the mountains and into the region, resulting in intense and damaging deluges). Crops cultivated in the region include wheat, barley, cauliflower, cabbage, spinach and peas. The growing season is incredibly short – only around four months – so groups of around six to ten households band together to carry out the major harvests, working from dawn to dusk. The wheat is threshed out in the fields, using cattle or mules to tread on the cut plants and release the chaff, which is blown away in the wind. The barley will later be roasted and used to make tsampa, a flour that is combined with yak-butter tea to create a doughy paste that acts as a high-energy staple in the region.

Its flavour is similar to cooked chestnuts and it’s often eaten before or after exercise, as the roasted nature of the barley means that it’s easily digestible and the energy it contains can therefore be quickly assimilated by the body. For this reason, and because it’s easy to transport in its dry state, tsampa is used as a convenience food and is often taken on treks by porters. Meat is considered a luxury in the region and eaten only occasionally in dishes such as sha momo, a traditional Ladakhi (and Tibetan) recipe that features steamed or pan-fried dumplings stuffed with beef and herbs and served with a chilli sauce.



ABOVE: Children from the village of Pigmo play on rudimentary home-made skis fashioned out of pieces of rubber hosing. The village of Pigmo is the first settlement that travellers encounter after they’ve left the frozen river. Travelling from Leh towards Padum, a large village of around 700 people and the capital of the Zanskar region, travellers enter the gorge at Chilling and exit the gorge before Hanumil, where the river valley widens and it becomes possible to follow a path. Between these two points, it’s sometimes possible to climb up onto the sides of the gorge if the river hasn’t completely frozen but, at other points, the gorge walls are so high that if the ice has temporarily thawed, travellers have to wait until the river refreezes, which can take several days.

Despite the difficulties of travelling through the region when the snows come, skiing hasn’t traditionally been used as a means of transport by the locals, largely because trees don’t grow here, so there is little in the way of raw materials from which to make skis. In 1995, a group of British geologists taking part in a winter expedition in the region noticed the lack of skis and one of them returned to set up the Zanskar Ski School in Padam. The school provides lessons for a small fee and loans out donated skis to the local community. Among the benefits that the school hopes to bring are improved education – children often find it difficult to get to school through the deep snow – a reduction in the rheumatism that children are increasingly suffering after wading through deep snow drifts, better response times in emergency situations, and the possibility of offering ski tours to tourists in the future. So far, more than 300 residents have received training, and local doctors and policemen regularly borrow skis.




ABOVE: Inhabitants of the village of Nerak, in common with those of other villages in the valley, protect themselves from the cold by living in underground rooms lit by a single window in the ceiling. Traditionally, people sit on the floor or on cushions, and during the winter, the entire family stays in the kitchen beside the stove. Historically, Zanskar houses were made out of mud, but newer buildings are constructed from bricks. Houses vary in size depending on the size of the family, which ranges from two to around ten people. In the past, the population size was limited by the fact that many families lived in polyandrous units (with more than one male relative ‘sharing’ a wife), and the fact that many young left their villages to join monasteries.

Polyandry is thought to be practised in areas where resources are limited in order to ensure sustainable population sizes. Today, many young men (and women) still join the monasteries (and nunneries) dotted along the valley, but the practice of polyandry is dying out. It was made illegal during the middle of the 20th century, and although polyandric marriages continued into the 1980s, the younger generation now largely wants to enter monogamous unions and to marry for love. In the recent past, when marriages were arranged – often by maternal uncles – the complete geneaology of the two families would be passed on in order to avoid consanguinity. Although Zanskar is now located in India, the people of the region are largely of Tibetan origin and practise Tibetan Buddhism, although around five per cent of the population are Muslim, particularly those around the village of Padum.



ABOVE: The mouth of the Zanskar river gorge near the village of Chilling. From here, the river flows downstream into the Indus River, Pakistan’s longest river at nearly 3,200 kilometres. Previously, the Zanskar region, which, along with Ladakh, has become a stronghold of Tibetan culture, was much more isolated, but during the 1970s, a road was constructed from Kargil on the Pakistan border. The first truck arrived in 1980 and, combined with the lifting of a ban on foreigners in the region during the early ’70s, has led to a steady increase in the number of tourists, altering both the local culture and economy. More recently, the Indian government has started to build a road that will follow the path of the gorge and link Padum to the outside world year round. Environmentalists are concerned about the impact this will have on the gorge, and there have already been reports of bitumen barrels being dumped in the river. At present, the road is progressing at a rate of ten kilometres a year, and is expected to be finished in 2012, but observers suggest that things could speed up, should hostilities between Pakistan and India flare up again. For their part, the Zanskar-pa believe that the spirits who currently protect travellers making their way along the frozen river in winter will flee the area if the road is ever completed.

Photographs by Bruno Zanzottera/Parallelozero