Shepherding in the Himalayas

The herding life looks idyllic in books and movies. In real life, it calls for hard labour, perseverance and sacrifice. A dispatch from Uttarakhand by Anand Sankar

My friend Rajmohan and I were walking through the depths of a pristine oak forest in Uttarakhand. After we had walked a short distance, my eyes fell on a path cutting through a lush undergrowth. It was narrow. Surely, we can’t use this, I said to myself. “Who made this?” I asked Rajmohan, a local. “Bhed-bakri (sheep and goats),” he said.

Thousands of goats and sheep had forged this trail by walking up and down during their annual migration to the high-altitude bugyals (grasslands) in the Himalayas. They had trampled the forest floor and their nitrogen-rich urine had burned the grass, creating a path over time. This sparked my curiosity in transhumance, the practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle.

That night, we camped next to a bhediwala’s dera (shepherd’s shelter) inside the forest. We started a small fire to cook our dinner but realised we hadn’t brought along the rubber gasket of the pressure cooker. We approached our neighbour sheepishly to check if we could borrow his. The shepherd laughed at our predicament and told us to bring our pressure cooker over to his roaring fire, fed by dead wood. In a jiffy, he rigged up a gasket from wheat flour dough and we were set. After a meal of piping hot khichdi, we stayed back in the shepherd’s tarpaulin tent, sipping black tea and talking until 3 am.

Pic Anand SankarFinest outdoorsmen

This was in the summer of 2013. I had just moved from Bengaluru to live in Uttarakhand. As one who loves the outdoors and rural life, I was fascinated by the shepherds of the Himalayas. They are the finest outdoorsmen, I thought. It’s a men’s club, yes.

They search in the wild for high-quality pastures, guided by indigenous knowledge of the rhythms of nature. They scale terrains vulnerable to natural calamities and where predators are looking for an easy meal. They live out of tents for 10 months in a year, under tarpaulin sheets held in place by rocks and using the goat hair blanket as bedding. They set out with very few kitchen supplies, never without chora though. It is a local herb that adds magic to rajma. They pack more medicines and injections for their flock than for themselves. Their clothing is special too. Their tunics and trousers are woven at home from sheep wool. The wool blocks the wind but it also breathes, making it handy for year-round use. It is water repellent. Shake out the wet clothes, sit near the fire for five minutes, and you are toasty again. They roam in simple rubber shoes: anti-slip, inherently waterproof and easy to clean.

My appreciation for the shepherd’s life has grown deeper since. In the neighbourhood where I live in this Valley, sheep and goats outnumber human inhabitants by 10 times. I run two social enterprises here. One offers sustainable tourism and the other helps farmers sell their produce.

Sheep v/s goats

How do shepherds know which sheep or goat is theirs? I remember asking this question to every shepherd in my early days here. “We just know which is ours,” came the reply from Rajesh, a 30-year-old shepherd. In bigger flocks, some shepherds mark their animals with Holi colours. Only washable colours are used, so as to not stain their wool.

Every skill is handed down through the generations. If you think a sturdy stick in your hand, a soft song on your lips, and a few hand gestures are enough to lead your flock, you will make a fool of yourself. I have stuck to my lane, going only so far as buying a shepherd farzi (sheep wool tunic) and koont (goat hair rug) from a shepherd family.

Rajesh gave me a demo of how to separate the sheep from the goats. It is a critical exercise because a goat won’t eat anything if it is stuck with the sheep, and vice-versa. Sheep prefer grass. Goats prefer leaves.

Every morning, shepherds have to divide their sheep and goats, which cosily fall asleep together at night. They make two types of low guttural noises, one to call out the sheep, and another to call out the goats. Using these sounds, the animals are separated and guided to different areas of the forest. Naughty sheep or goats that try to slip in with the wrong herd are caught by their hind legs and manually relocated. I once documented this 10-minute choreography and uploaded it on YouTube. Some 3.5 lakh people have viewed it. One needs to start young and perfect these vocalisations until the animals are tuned to them.

Once the flock gets going, there is little rest for the shepherds. They have to be as nimble on their feet as their flock, egging on the slackers, controlling the speeders and watching out for predators like the leopard, for which their sheep dogs also lend a helping paw. They have to scout for the best grazing spot, which is often the most inaccessible.
A young shepherd named Kumar told me he learnt to find them after years of watching his father. Tender, juicy and untouched is how these animals like their feed. If the sheep sense someone was there before them, they tend to graze less, and sniff more. The smell of faeces and urine are dead giveaways.

I once followed Kumar along scraggy slopes around the village of Kalap in the Valley. He was as sure-footed as the best billy goat, while I was often on all fours, even though I am a seasoned off-trail walker. One slip and you are pulp. I am not being dramatic. In a year, we hear of three or four cases of shepherds falling to death while on the job. It is the same with the animals. But since nothing goes to waste in these rugged terrains, shepherds collect the fallen carcass — it is food that can last several days.

Salty ritual

‘Feeding salt’ was another ritual that I documented on my camera in 2013. Every evening, shepherds feed salt to their livestock. The mountain soil and fodder are deficient in essential minerals, which these animals need to beat dehydration and maintain electrolyte balance. I knew animals like salt licks but I had no idea it was to such an extent. The moment sacks of salt crystals are emptied on a rock, the sheep and goats go for it as if they are famished. The ‘gentle’ animals leap, push, and head-butt. Baa and bleat rend the air. The chaos over the low-grade salt, sourced from coastal salt pans, lasts 10-15 minutes. It takes 30-40 kilos of salt to feed a flock of 300 animals every day.

Heroes save pastures

Movies and books show shepherding as a life of bliss and brotherhood. In reality, it is business-like. Once I witnessed a meeting of shepherds to divide up traditional grazing lands, the prized high meadows especially. Every village has an ancient claim to what is their territorial range for fodder, settled through the ages by conflict.

The local folklore is replete with ‘heroes’ who waged wars to protect their grazing lands. A story told in Kalap: A long time ago, an ‘outsider’ shepherd stole the livestock from this village and killed one of their caretakers. When the caretaker’s brother learnt of the abuse, he was overcome with rage. He single-handedly killed the greedy shepherd and his men, and rescued his sheep and goats. Before retreating, he threw a big rock on one side of the mountain and warned the onlookers, ‘That’s the boundary of my village. You enter and I will burn down your village’.

Now the grazing borders are more or less settled as the long arm of the law doesn’t want villages fighting each other. Every year, before summer kicks in, it is decided which toli will graze where. Toli refers to a flock. It comprises sheep and goats from 3 to 10 households and is managed collectively by shepherds from these families.

If a toli from one village wants access to another village’s pasture, a fee is levied. It can vary from Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000. And trespassers cough up an equal amount as penalty.

Even the rights to use trails are negotiated so that only one flock is treading along at a time. This also avoids intermingling of flocks.

Grazing calendar

In this part of the Himalayas, flocks graze fresh grass and leaves at lower altitudes and along river banks during April. As spring gives way to summer, they are led up the slopes. The shepherds camp at a given altitude for three to seven days. This prevents overgrazing and degradation of the highlands. By the middle of May, they reach 9,500 ft and by August, they scale the glaciated peaks at 15,000 ft. High-altitude fodder is eagerly pursued because the animals find it a lot juicier. Higher elevations receive more precipitation, that’s why. The juicier the fodder, the more the flocks eat and fatten up.

The logistical support required by shepherds grows substantially as they head higher up. Which is why they work in teams. Each shepherd has a duty assigned — watching the flock, fetching rations, bringing firewood, cooking, and feeding salt to the animals. Bringing rations up requires two days of hiking. Firewood gathering takes a day. If they fall ill, the nearest hospital is three days away. It is worse for the animals. While hiking in August 2017, I found a 2,500-strong flock reeling under a viral epidemic. They were dying by the dozen and the shepherds watched helplessly. It took my NGO 14 days to reach civilisation, consult veterinarians, find medicines, and make a treatment plan. About 1,000 animals had died by the time the rescue team reached them four days later.

Harsh winters

Shepherds have little time for their families. They drift off to middle to high altitudes in the summer. And in the winters, they venture 80 to 100 km away for lower valley pastures.

On a hike above the remote Rupin Valley, I came across a shepherd who had been running for seven hours to get back to his village, Satta. A message had reached him that his child had been rushed to a hospital in Dehradun two days earlier. He had no update about his child as there was no mobile network. Working in teams allows shepherds to take care of each other’s families.

To spend time with families, shepherds like Pappu base their flock in the village rather than rove around for fresh forage, which is scanty during the winters. “We fatten up our animals all through the summer. By September, we start descending from the highlands to sell some animals at the cattle markets. We have to ensure the rest of the flock survives the winter without losing much weight,” Pappu from Kalap told me as he climbed up an oak tree to cut leaves on a snowy day.

As temperatures fall in October, the meadows start withering. Shepherds push their livestock to graze whatever is left from the summer. Over four to five months, the livestock subsists on stocks of dry grass, millet husk, paddy straw, and rajma stalk. Occasionally, goats are taken to munch on oak trees and the sheep to the warmer river valley to nibble on grass. The animals are reduced to bones by the time spring arrives.

Shepherds stay at home with their flock only during January and February when it snows heavily. Otherwise, the flock stays in the open under the watch of shepherds, who take turns to return home for brief periods.

Changing times

Shepherds don’t crib about hardships. They are quite stoic and content people. However, times have changed.

Even if the youth can buy solar chargers to power mobile phones and have access to entertainment on the move, this lonely, nomadic life is not something they are taking up. Not that earnings are bad. A shepherd who manages to sell 20 animals a year can earn up to Rs 3 lakh. It is far above the mean household income of less than Rs 1 lakh in the region.

My dear friend Jayender from Kalap sold his entire flock because none of his children wanted to follow in his footsteps. “Bas thak gaya (I got tired),” he responded to the shock on my face. He was about 49 but his sun-beaten face made him look older. He went on to work in my tourism company as a ‘retired shepherd’. He used to make fresh goat milk cheese (called phedu) on the campfire and regale us with stories of how he fought bears and defied landslides. He died of cardiac arrest at 55, guarding an apple orchard that he had planted for sustenance in his old age.

A deep symbiosis exists between shepherds and the land they steward. But this ancient occupation is also under threat from climate change and deforestation. Already, snow and rainfall are on a downward trend, shrinking the fodder. Just last week, 100 sheep and goats died in the Upper Tons Valley after being struck by lightning. I was surprised to see shepherds walking down from high-altitude pastures in the third week of August this year. “Thand bahut badh gayi thi (It had become bitterly cold),” one explained. Wildlife from lower elevations are migrating upwards as their forests are being cleared. Now, sheep and goats are competing intensely with wildlife for fodder and space. 

Even the size of the flocks is declining by 3% to 7% annually in every village in the Valley. Does that mean the trails burned by them on the forest floor will disappear too? Because nature eventually reclaims everything.

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