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Ahead of winter, Ladakhis making a buffer stock
by Jigmet Angchuk

       Ladakh: It is November when people in Ladakh get busy preparing for winter when due to heavy snowfall, the region gets cut off from rest of the country. The major roads get blocked making transportation impossible for about six months. Ladakh, which is bound by the great Himalayas in the south and Karakoram in the north side, receives little rainfall and as a result vegetation is scarce. In winters, the temperature plummets to minus 20 degrees Celsius and a heavy snowfall makes the situation worse. The roads in the northern regions of Srinagar, Leh and Manali get blocked. Traffic becomes restricted and articles for daily necessities are hard to come by. Grains, wheat flour, and roasted satu (gram flour) are the most common and nutritious edible items stored in underground bunkers, which is a kind of natural refrigeration, as they last long. Every year the residents are left with no option but to store sufficient quantities of food for the coming six to seven months. "From Leh to Srinagar and Manali, the roads get blocked by November. Hence, we don't have any transportation to carry goods, literally, no transport works. That's why we prepare stock in prior, like food, oil and other things. Everything that we get from outside, which we don't prepare here, we stock them for six months," said Tsering Angchuk, a farmer.

     The unbearable cold restricts villagers to their houses. The courtyards are turned into mini-Greenhouses in order to grow basic vegetables and fruits. People start storing almost from October itself and adequate quantities of kerosene oil, timber, grains and other articles of use are stored. To ensure that the edible stuff lasts long enough, the vegetables are stored in underground bunkers, which is a kind of natural refrigeration. Potatoes and carrots are stored under the soil to prevent them from decaying. Winters, no doubt, are taxing times for the people of Ladakh. But this is the only way how people in Ladakh have to live even when all of us enjoy the winter season moving all around with friends or relatives on holidays. Ladakh is India's highest plateau with much of it being over 3,000 meter (9,800 foot). It spans the Himalayan and Karakoram mountain ranges and the upper Indus River valley. Ladakh includes the fairly populous main Indus valley, the more remote Zanskar (in the south) and Nubra valleys (to the north over Khardung La), the almost deserted Aksai Chin, and Kargil and Suru Valley areas to the west (Kargil being the second most important town in Ladakh). Before partition, Baltistan (now under Pakistani administration) was a district in Ladakh. Skardu was the winter capital of Ladakh while Leh was the summer capital. The mountain ranges in this region were formed over a period of 45 million years by the folding of the Indian plate into the more stationary Eurasian Plate. The drift continues, causing frequent earthquakes in the Himalayan region.
-Nov 10,  2006

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