Geetanjali Krishna: Snowed in and loving it!

Last week, the entire region of Spiti was cut off from the rest of the world for the duration of this winter, with snow finally rendering Kunzum Pass impassible. It will now remain shut until March, when the snow melts. While reading this bit of news last week, my thoughts were with Gantuk Namgyal, the affable Spitian from Demul, one of the highest inhabited villages in the Himalayas, whose family had hosted me last month. Even then, the family was busy gearing up for the long and hard winter ahead.

Namgyal's house was constructed in the traditional Spitian style with two floors, the lower one used for storage and the upper one for living. There were sacks of potatoes and food grain in sturdy sacks of woven yak wool stacked high in the lower floor. Outside, their small stock of animals lowed peacefully in the paddock. "In the peak of winter, there's as much as 10 feet of snow outside. That is why we use the colder lower floor for storage and for the animals to shelter in," explained Namgyal. The household needed to store food for the six winter months since they had no access to a market for shopping. "Usually, since we are snowbound, we just eat what we've stored, or barter with other villagers," he said. Namgyal and his fellow villagers lived on a diet of meat, potatoes and flour through winter since it was impossible to grow vegetables, except in greenhouses. His mother and wife used a nifty system for storing vegetables though - they left them on the terrace in baskets, where the veggies froze naturally and stayed fresh all winter long!

"Basically, in Spiti we spend our summer trying to earn and store enough for our daily sustenance as well as for the long winter months," he said, showing me raw wool also stacked in his basement. His wife spent the winter knitting and weaving to bring home some income during the winter months when they had no other work.

Then we walked up to the terrace. Around us were other terraces where bushels of red thorny grass were drying. Beneath the houses, stacks of dung cakes baked in the blinding Spitian sun. "The most important provision we make for winter is fuel, not just for heating and cooking, but also for melting snow which is our only source of water all winter," said Namgyal. "At the best of times, getting LPG cylinders in remote villages like Demul is tough. In winter, it's impossible! Instead, we dry this grass to burn in our hearths. The dung cakes from our yaks and cows are good too," he said. This year, they had not had electricity all summer, so the chances of power supply in winter were bleak indeed. "In Demul, we are lucky to have a solar power station set up by a local organisation, Ecosphere. Other villages neither have heat nor light from electricity all winter!" he said. It must be really tough, I commented sympathetically.

Namgyal looked amazed. "Tough? No, it isn't! Spitians love wintertime. The enforced inactivity is most welcome after the summer's hard labour. Everyone's free, there's no hurry for anything. We celebrate many festivals in winter as well as birthdays, even if they fall in summer. We drop in to each others homes for endless leisurely cups of tea. And it's the only time that we catch up on the latest Bollywood releases," he said laughingly.

Sitting in Delhi in the milky November sun, I recalled the warmth of the community and family in Spiti as I read about fresh snowfall there. Maybe this warmth insulates the Namgyals and their brethren from the Spitian winter even more than their stockpiling and preparations do.