Drokpa
Nomads of the High Himalaya
“Here in the vast expanse of remoteness, everything is linked, and every sigh and breath of the earth is heard by a people who listen still ”
For more than 10,000 years, nomadic pastoralists have roamed free, on the high-altitude grasslands of the Tibetan plateau and across the Himalaya with their herds of sheep, goats and yaks.
Nomads still make up almost half of all ethnic Tibetans, and as pastoralists, they are driven to migrate by the unrelenting hunger of their herds of yak.
The Tibetan nomads, the Drokpa (dro to move or go) (pa people), have continued a way of life that has changed little in thousands of years. The nomadic dialect still echoes throughout the Tibetan Plateau and deep into the Himalaya. Their lives are deeply interwoven with the rhythms and cycles of the natural world. They live connected to the land, the sky, the rivers and animals that sustain them. As stewards of these wild and remote mountains and grasslands, they recognise their very survival is dependent on the health and wellbeing of the land they call home.
Ad Tso wears the coral and turquoise of the Kham-Pa woven into her 108 braids tied with yak bones
Kham, Sichuan, China
“They know their environment in a way that can only be acquired through living on equal footing with everything in that world, not in domination, through a recognition that we humans are dependent on our surroundings ”
Their resilience to survive in the thin air of these remote high mountains, to read the sky, the weather, the land, and to navigate through it, has been honed through generations. They have retained a capacity to orientate themselves in space and time, wayfinding without modern cartographic tools.
How to live sustainably within the ecosystem, is woven into the fabric of their ancient traditions. They leave scarce evidence of their passage through the world and take only what they need.
They have much to teach us in our broken capitalist societies about a different way of knowing the world, living lightly on the earth and the meaning of community.
“Their world operates on a rhythm completely different from the one to which we are accustomed. Nomads’ lives are tuned to the growth of grass, the births of animals and the movement of their herds. ”
“Nomads have always moved in rotation systems, intuitively understanding that over-grazing is a slow death in itself a traditional system of living…
Migrations are set in motion by ‘rough times’ based on traditions and the Tibetan lunar calendar. The yak’s grazing opportunities are still of prime importance. It is not so much accessibility that matters but rather the quality and availability of grazing
”
Winter home at 4,800m for several Chang Tang Pa families
Chang Tang, Ladakh, India
Dolpo-pa family on the move along the ancient salt-grain trade route between Tibet and Nepal
Dolpo, Nepal
Their ancient way of life is rooted in the herding of yak. Their lives are lived in constant movement, in search of grazing land for their herd, with a knowledge and understanding of allowing the natural world time to recover.
Several extended families typically come together in the winter months as their migration patterns lead them to separate seasonal resting areas for the other months.
Belonging to the land and not defined by international borders – the Drokpa are scattered across the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya in Nepal, India, Bhutan and China, extending the Tibetan Cultural Area beyond Tibet.
The Tibetan pastoral area is one of the largest pastoral areas on earth, stretching 2,500 km East-West and 1,200km North-South.
On the move across the highest geography on the planet
The High Himalaya
“With their homes rolled up into bundles and lashed to the backs of yaks as they move across the grasslands, nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya offer a rare perspective on life ”
The Himalaya and Tibetan plateau, belong to the highest geography on the planet. The source of four of the most important rivers in the world, flow from the cardinal points on the Tibetan Plateau. Often referred to as the ‘third pole’ and one of the most sensitive environments on earth to our changing climate, experiencing accelerated ice melt, hydrological changes and desertification.
The Tibetan Plateau is the most extensive high elevation region on earth. Known as the "Roof of the World"
“What is happening now, according to nomads, is that the traditional systems of determining migration times are no longer working, that the changes in the environment are taking place with a speed not recalled. Nomads point to the great grasslands becoming increasingly ‘skam’po’ (dry). The informal irrigation rivulets and systems fed by snow run-off are no longer assured… Rains (nom’bu) are no longer predictable, snow falls but in decreasing amounts, and at different times ”
The Tibetan plateau is the water tower of Asia, the source of major rivers including the Mekong, Yellow, Yangtze, Brahmaputra, Karnali and Indus. As global temperatures rise, the glaciers are melting and grassland permafrost thawing at an alarming rate, accelerating hydrological changes and desertification.
The Drokpa are facing threats to their way of life as this remote mountain environment becomes increasingly hostile to supporting human life on the move, at an unheralded speed of change
Map / Tibetan Autonomous Region – light yellow area / Tibetan Cultural Area includes dark yellow areas too
They are being displaced from their homeland through forced assimilation. The Chinese government is in the advanced stages of relocating between 50% and 80% of the 2.25 million nomads on the Tibetan plateau. China is constructing vast road infrastructure as part of its Belt and Road Initiative to connect China with the world, which will render the nomadic caravans between Tibet and Nepal redundant.
But the Drokpa have extraordinary resilience. Hopefully, Tibetan pastoralism will continue to create and recreate itself, by surviving, adapting and evolving to a changeable political economy and climate impacts.
For over a decade, scattered across these high mountain peaks and plateau, I have photographed the Drokpa - my images a record of a threatened way of life.