Autumn Sonata

This is Namgya. Nothing grows here. Just apples, apricots and black grapes. But then, you can't expect an orchard to thrive 3,000 metres above sea level, can you? Yet the Namgyans, a little community of mixed Kinnauri-Tibetan blood, manage to live off just tree fat and the arid mountain air.

Namgya straddles the Sino-Indian frontier, appearing rather like a thread stretching 11 kilometres from Shib Ki La, the vantage point from where the first sign of Chinese habitation