Picture a life where each of your senses is suffused with the pure elements of nature, unadulterated by the opaque dissonance of modern city life.
A life where you open your eyes to catch the glimpse of first light hitting the snow-capped peaks. A life where you smell the sweet fragrance of mud, grass and wild seabuckthorn flowers. You drink water from the crystal clear glacial pools and breathe in the clean and crisp mountain air. Keeping your company are a bunch of dogs and a flock of sheep as you pour out some hot butter tea from the thermos. The sky is your roof and the silence doesn’t unnerve you. You don’t see another human for weeks and yet loneliness doesn’t creep up on you.
You watch the milky way in all its glory and catching a shooting star is not a rarity.
Sustained by millet in both cooked and fermented forms along with some fresh milk, your body thanks you and heals along with your soul. You are reborn.
Sounds like a distant dream doesn’t it? Seems like a far-fetched fantasy? It’s not. It’s possible and thousands of people are doing this willingly and happily even today, year after year. It’s a way of life for them. Case in point being this shepherd who I met while walking back from Chandrataal. Every year once the snow melts in April, the shepherds collect the sheep from different families and villages and move up higher into the mountains, where there are rich pastoral grounds to graze.
They spend months up there, mostly alone, taking care of the sheep for the community and return once winter arrives. A bunch of rocks placed on top of each other in a curve becomes their temporary home. The sky is literally their roof. When they do come across someone trekking, they shift from being a recluse to the most gracious host offering up everything they have to you.
