Nomadism in exit mode

Watch out!" I cried as we made our breathless way up a grassy meadow in Auli. A large, horned ram was hurtling towards us - its bells ringing a mad alarm call. There was no place to run, and none to hide. The animal barrelled into us, butting us painfully in our sides. We froze for a couple of seconds, before we realised that the animal was tame, and had come to play with us. "Hey!" shouted an old woman running nimbly down the steep slope, voluminous woollen skirts flapping wildly behind her. "Don't scare the poor city slickers," in a trice, she reached us and pulled the ram away. "I'm sorry," she said, "but my pet ram is so spoilt that she thinks she is a puppy - not a large animal with horns. I hope she didn't frighten you all too much."

It turned out that the old lady was in Auli for the summer, herding her cows and sheep to higher pastures. "As the rains approach, I'll escape them by going high and higher until my animals and I are almost in China," she cackled. The ram affectionately butted the old woman before rendering her sights on us again. The old lady told us that her pet's name was Muskaan. "Life tends to get a little lonely for me up in these hills. Muskaan is all I have for company. As a result, she is a little spoilt and frisky," she said.

I asked what her name was, and this led to another series of cackles. "I'm so old, it has been decades since anyone called me by my name. After my husband's death many winters ago, I've just been known as Mai," she said. She belonged to a village below Joshimath, Hailong. "My son is a school teacher, and his son has a job in a hotel. My daughter-in-law is a very nice girl, but she refuses to clean dung. So tending the cows and buffaloes is my responsibility," she said.

"There was a time when many people from my village and its environs brought their sheep and cattle to high altitude grasslands like Auli," she said. This seasonal migratory pattern is hundreds of years old. The shepherds would camp in the mountains, shear their sheep and tend to their young, returning to their villages only when the first snow fell in Auli. The meadows of Auli still bore testimony to this, in the form of many uninhabited settlements which migrant herders used as camps.

Today, however, like Mai's schoolteacher son, most villagers have jobs that don't allow them to maintain this traditionally nomadic lifestyle. "The young people get jobs that force them to put down roots. They still have sheep and cattle, but don't have the time to take them to graze. In fact, several of my neighbours now pay me to bring their herds of cows here," she said.

Consequently, Mai's life was lonely. "I'm old, though thankfully my body is in perfect running order. Still, I make sure to stay close to people otherwise nobody would know if I lived or died," she said. As we were leaving, I saw the ram nuzzle her affectionately. The old woman bent down to kiss her. "She gives me company when I am on these lonely mountains. I've never minded being alone, but having Muskaan with me makes it much better."

As the old woman and her ram disappeared over a distant promontory, I mused that chances were high that in the not very distant future, the way of life that she represented would also vanish in the haze in the same way as she just did.