Himalayas – Nako Faces

I joined Ride Expeditions for ten days of riding by motorcycle in northern India, mostly through Spiti Valley, high in the Himalayas.  The remote area is in the state of Himachal Pradesh, bordered by Tibet to the east and the disputed Kashmir region to the north.  This will be the first of several posts with photographs from Nako, a small village on the slopes of the high peaks running along the border with Tibet.  We stayed in the town at the end of July, in a small encampment of permanent tents with a view over the village, just below the highest slopes to the ridge above.  Our stay was short – just one night – but I had enough time for a walk through town late on the afternoon of our arrival, and for a hike up to the ridge at sunrise the next morning for a view into Tibet.

In this post I’m sharing portraits of some of the people I encountered in Nako.  They are predominately of Tibetan ethnicity, with a way of life that has probably not changed much from previous centuries.  According to an Indian census site, in 2011 there were only 128 families with 572 people in the village.  It is a purely agricultural town, clearly dependent on the snow melt from above to irrigate crops in the short growing season.

At the end of July the whole town seemed to be involved in harvesting peas from the irrigated terraces stepping up the steep slopes around the village.  The lead photograph is of a man carrying a heavy sack of peas supported with a band around his forehead – one of many men carrying peas that passed me on their trek from the slopes into the area in town where large piles of bags were being loaded onto trucks.  There men checked the quality and quantities being loaded.

Of all the amazing places we rode through on that trip I loved this little village the most:  the healthy faces of the people, the evident simplicity of their lives, the communal effort to bring in the harvest, and the truly awesome scale of the surrounding peaks and valleys.