For decades, Konchok Dorjey grazed the world’s finest cashmere-producing goats in the arid, treeless Kharnak village in India’s Ladakh region, a high mountainous cold desert that borders China and Pakistan.
But a decade ago, Mr Dorjey, 45, gave up his pastoral life in search of a better future for his family. He sold off his animals and migrated to an urban settlement on the outskirts of a regional town called Leh.
He now lives with his wife, two daughters and a son in Kharnakling, where scores of other nomadic families from his native village have also settled in the last two decades.
“It was a tough decision,” Mr Dorjey said. “But I did not have much choice.”
Shifting weather patterns have already altered people’s lives through floods, landslides and droughts in Ladakh, an inhospitable yet pristine landscape of high mountain passes and vast river valleys that in the past was an important part of the Silk Road trade route.
Frequent loss of livestock due to diseases, lack of health care, border conflict and shrinking grazing land — worsened by extreme climatic changes — has forced hundreds to migrate from sparsely populated villages to urban clusters.
In the remote Himalayan region, glaciers are melting fast, a worry for villagers who largely depend on glacial run-off for water.
Mr Dorjey, who swapped herding for cab driving, has seen it all. He said that in his youth elders would often talk about moving somewhere else because there was so much snow that daily life was difficult.
“As I grew up, snow fell so little that we would contemplate leaving the place,” Dorjey said.
He herded 100 cashmere goats, yak and sheep. But his younger daughter, Jigmet Dolma, now 18, fell ill, changing the family’s course.
Jigmet initially suffered from pneumonia. Then she had seizures and would often faint, sending the family 170 kilometres north to Leh, where they would spend days for her treatment. As the family was yet to come to terms with her ailment, incurring losses to their livestock due to diseases and cold was draining them of their resources, Mr Dorjey said.
“It was a cataclysmic year and extreme cold badly hit livestock. It just devoured large number of baby goats,” he said. At about 15,000 feet altitude, the temperatures in the region can fall to minus 35°C during long winter months.
In 2011, Mr Dorjey locked his stone house and left Kharnak for good. He painstakingly built his new life in Kharnakling and now drives a taxi for a living. The health of his daughter has improved, while his two other children are studying.
“Ultimately, it boils down to safeguarding your family,” he said.
“Urban life has brought its own issues and almost everything runs on money,” he said as he explained his earlier predicaments of new life. “Life was much easier there (in Kharnak) with all its hardships.”
Mr Dorjey’s wife, Sonam Kunkhen, was happy to leave the old village.
“It’s better here for me and my family,” Ms Kunkhen, 47, said. “It took us a while to adjust, but I’m glad we moved here.”
On a recent sunny day, Mr Dorjey drove to his native village Kharnak where he met his uncle, Tsering Choldan. He said the nomad, 64, told him that he too was leaving soon. Other shepherds were also packing up their bags.
Mr Dorjey said in recent years the village had received considerable attention as authorities built prefabricated huts for nomads and spruced up animal feed facilities. But he doubted that would stop migration.
“There are some facilities that were not there when I was living here. But there are also some other regressive changes that have occurred,” Mr Dorjey said.
The worst, he said, was unpredictability of the weather and shortage of water in recent years.
Many of Kharnak’s pastures have become barren owing to unusual weather in recent years. And the glaciers that covered the surrounding high peaks have shrunk drastically in last two decades causing water shortages, the shepherds said.
“Few small ones that rested on mountain peaks in my years of nomadic life have now almost entirely disappeared,” Mr Dorjey said, pointing to a barren mountain range in Kharnak.
Known as a part of the water tower of Asia, Ladakh has to thousands of glaciers, including Siachen glacier that is the longest outside the Polar region. Some of the region’s glaciers also feed the Indus Basin Irrigation System, one of the world’s largest, that provides water to India and China and is considered a lifeline for agricultural land in Pakistan.
But they are receding at an alarming rate, threatening the water supply of millions of people.
In recent years, the changes on the ground are stark.
There are some fruit and vegetables, like apple and broccoli, now grown in the region due to favourable weather. About a decade and a half ago such farming was unheard of.
Bird watchers now spot paradise flycatcher and Eurasian scops owl that don’t belong to the region. At the same time some native wildlife like Tibetan antelope or Ladakh urial are disappearing from the region’s landscape.
A military stand-off between India and China has led to the deployment of tens of thousands more soldiers to an already militarised region and has led to massive infrastructure development in recent years. It has in turn increased localised pollution, mainly in the form of carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal and kerosene, and wood for heating shelters to keep soldiers warm in freezing temperatures.
Mr Dorjey said some places in the region “still receive a regular snowfall, but it melts fast”.
A quiet flight of nearly 100 nomadic families from the village has reduced its population to just 17 families who herd some 8,000 animals. While food security, health care and education are at the heart of their migration, the worsening climatic conditions exacerbated their flight.
Mr Dorjey’s eldest daughter, Rigzen Angmo, 21, has visited Kharnak only twice. “I would like to visit there once in a while. Just that. There is not much for me there,” said the undergraduate business commerce student.
Most young people would rather do anything but shepherd animals high in the mountains. Many of them are working in government offices, run their own businesses or do menial jobs with the Indian military.
But Mr Dorjey said he cannot take the nomad out of himself.
“It was the hardest decision in my life to leave my village. My soul is still here,” he said.
Jetour T1 specs
Engine: 2-litre turbocharged
Power: 254hp
Torque: 390Nm
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Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
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It's Monty Python's Crashing Rocket Circus
To the theme tune of the famous zany British comedy TV show, SpaceX has shown exactly what can go wrong when you try to land a rocket.
The two minute video posted on YouTube is a compilation of crashes and explosion as the company, created by billionaire Elon Musk, refined the technique of reusable space flight.
SpaceX is able to land its rockets on land once they have completed the first stage of their mission, and is able to resuse them multiple times - a first for space flight.
But as the video, How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster, demonstrates, it was a case if you fail, try and try again.
The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh590,000
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Crawley Town 3 (Tsaroulla 50', Nadesan 53', Tunnicliffe 70')
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- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
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- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
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Director: Ayan Mukerji
Stars: Hrithik Roshan, NTR, Kiara Advani, Ashutosh Rana
Rating: 2/5
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Uefa Champions League, last-16, second leg (first-leg scores in brackets):
PSG (2) v Manchester United (0)
Midnight (Thursday), BeIN Sports
ZAYED SUSTAINABILITY PRIZE
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The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 261hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 405Nm at 1,750-3,500rpm
Transmission: 9-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 6.9L/100km
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Price: From Dh117,059
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1. Fasting
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The burning issue
The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.
Read part four: an affection for classic cars lives on
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Read part one: how cars came to the UAE
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Uefa Champioons League semi-final, first leg:
Liverpool 5
Salah (35', 45 1'), Mane (56'), Firmino (61', 68')
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Second leg: May 2, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
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Under 12 – Minerva Academy
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BMW M5 specs
Engine: 4.4-litre twin-turbo V-8 petrol enging with additional electric motor
Power: 727hp
Torque: 1,000Nm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 10.6L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh650,000
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COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAlmouneer%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202017%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dr%20Noha%20Khater%20and%20Rania%20Kadry%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EEgypt%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20staff%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E120%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EBootstrapped%2C%20with%20support%20from%20Insead%20and%20Egyptian%20government%2C%20seed%20round%20of%20%3Cbr%3E%243.6%20million%20led%20by%20Global%20Ventures%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Know your camel milk:
Flavour: Similar to goat’s milk, although less pungent. Vaguely sweet with a subtle, salty aftertaste.
Texture: Smooth and creamy, with a slightly thinner consistency than cow’s milk.
Use it: In your morning coffee, to add flavour to homemade ice cream and milk-heavy desserts, smoothies, spiced camel-milk hot chocolate.
Goes well with: chocolate and caramel, saffron, cardamom and cloves. Also works well with honey and dates.
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
- Wear a protective helmet
- Park the electric scooter in designated parking lots (if any)
- Do not leave electric scooter in locations that obstruct traffic or pedestrians
- Solo riders only, no passengers allowed
- Do not drive outside designated lanes
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-final, first leg
Bayern Munich v Real Madrid
When: April 25, 10.45pm kick-off (UAE)
Where: Allianz Arena, Munich
Live: BeIN Sports HD
Second leg: May 1, Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid
THE SPECS
Engine: 1.5-litre
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Power: 110 horsepower
Torque: 147Nm
Price: From Dh59,700
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In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
How the bonus system works
The two riders are among several riders in the UAE to receive the top payment of £10,000 under the Thank You Fund of £16 million (Dh80m), which was announced in conjunction with Deliveroo's £8 billion (Dh40bn) stock market listing earlier this year.
The £10,000 (Dh50,000) payment is made to those riders who have completed the highest number of orders in each market.
There are also riders who will receive payments of £1,000 (Dh5,000) and £500 (Dh2,500).
All riders who have worked with Deliveroo for at least one year and completed 2,000 orders will receive £200 (Dh1,000), the company said when it announced the scheme.
