I thought I was well prepared.
A journey to the cold desert of Ladakh, especially the higher reaches of the Tibetan plateau, is a challenging one. But I was not going to Changthang for the first time. I had travelled there two years ago to meet Ladakh’s traditional Changpa nomads and map their decline.
So, in May, after spending a couple of days in Kargil and Leh, covering the Lok Sabha election, I set off from Leh, all pumped up to drive 170 km in a difficult mountainous region.
My destination was Pang valley – the proposed site of a sprawling 13-gigawatt renewable energy project. With me was a friend, who had travelled to Ladakh many times and had agreed to come along. What could go wrong?
To reach Pang, one has to cross the 17,000 feet high Tanglang La pass and enter the plains of Debring.
Two hours into our journey, my confidence began to waver.
As our car snaked through the curves of Rumtse village on the Leh-Manali highway, I thought we had taken the wrong road. During my 2022 trip, the treacherous pass had seemed just like any of the scores of mountains one navigates on the way to Ladakh or beyond. This time, I could hardly recognise the road – it was a mammoth mass of snow left over from winter, slowly melting away.
The sun was shining but we could not lower the car’s windows. The cold wind felt like a storm of ice.
We were not afraid of falling into a deep gorge, as the road to the summit of Tanglang La pass had been carved out like a tunnel. But we were worried that we may be buried under snow as even a car’s honking can trigger an avalanche.
Like much of Ladakh, there were no signs of humans anywhere. If something happened to us, there would be no witnesses.
We made it unscathed. But the most difficult curve on the pass was left. The last one before the summit – a twisted road that stared down a deep gorge.
Until then, I had tried to pacify my fears through music.
But the white road now seemed like a narrow path, with the frozen canopy of ice on both sides about to devour us. I abruptly stopped the car’s music system. All I could hear was the sound of my voice, reciting verses from the Holy Quran.
The prayers worked. We reached the pinnacle of the pass. It was time to stop and take in some fresh air.
Except, there was hardly any oxygen at that height.
Unbothered, my friend was trying to memorialize his journey to the summit by clicking a picture of himself at the top of the mountain. I was struggling to even get back in the car. Irritated, I yelled out to him – somehow got back into the car.
Multiple puffs of oxygen from the portable oxygen cylinder I had bought from a pharmacy in Leh city didn’t help. Now, the only option to breathe normally was to lose height.
As soon as we hit the plains of Debring, we could breathe easier.
Before us, on either side, was a massive landscape of plains dotted by huge patches of wild grass. It became clear that this was the site of the massive solar and wind energy project announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15, 2020.
I was there to report on the concerns and viewpoints of the nomads who had been using this landscape as their pastures for centuries. But I could not spot any local residents in the wilderness, only a few migrant workers.
We drove 50 km more to reach Pang, where we fortunately met 45-year-old Tsama Lamo, who runs a makeshift restaurant and hotel. She told us to drive back some 60 km to reach Thukje village.
“You’ll find nomads there. They spend winters there,” she said.
Back in 2022, I had gone to Thukje only to find it emptied of people. All doors were locked as the residents were camping in different pastures to graze their livestock. At that time, the village of stone and mud houses looked like an ancient historical site.
This time, however, Thukje was open for business and alive.
My plan was to look for the sarpanch of the village and ask him to introduce me to other villagers.
But as soon as I got to the middle of the village, I began to feel breathless. Even though there were scores of villagers in front of me – the subjects of my story – I could not even walk a few metres to meet them. I was unable to think.
Until then, it had not occurred to me that the lack of oxygen in the human body can lead to brain fog.
Five minutes later, I found myself inside a primary health centre in the village where, it seemed, visitors frequently came to get oxygen therapy. It was a relief but we were exhausted.
I did not have the energy to ask any questions or listen to anything. All I wanted was to lie down and sleep.
But I also did not want to be in a place without a working telephone. My best bet was to get to Nyoma, some 76 km from the village, where I could get some mobile network and hospitals if I needed them.
It took us four hours – and not the two I had estimated – to reach Nyoma. It was 11 pm. We found the entire town shut. Homestays were closed and only a few restaurants were open.
We had not eaten anything since morning. But food was not a priority. We wanted a place to rest. After knocking on the doors of some 10-12 homestays, we finally got lucky.
“You can stay here for the night but there’s no food,” the owner of the homestay told us. Was it my green camouflage jacket that made her think I was from the army and agree to our proposal, even though we had woken her up in the middle of the night? I was not going to dig deeper.
“We will make our own food but let us stay,” I pleaded. She agreed. We quickly cooked a bowl of noodles, drank a lot of water and retired for the night.
I returned to Thukje again the next morning, feeling much better – and embarked on my interviews.
But after every 2-3 interviews, I needed to rush back to the primary health centre to get oxygen therapy.
As I took deep breaths, I wondered how foolhardy it was to envision such a project in an oxygen-starved region, how migrant workers would manage to build anything in this cold desert. The mighty Indian state had decreed this mega-ambitious project, but what forces of nature was it up against?
I met people, who would be the direct victims of the massive project, but were in the dark about its details. As an outsider, I knew more about the technicalities of the project than them.
But their insights were key to understanding what this vast swathe of land meant for them. If the project ended up swallowing up their pastures, their livestock would perish and they would have to look for work in alien cities. It would end their centuries-old tradition and culture.
I realised that the nomads of Changthang were asking for nothing more but the life of their cattle and livestock – beseeching that their pastures be left untouched. It was something that I realised with every struggling breath – the pastures symbolised oxygen for them, a breath of life.
