Kashmir’s pastoral nomads trekked the Himalayas for generations. Now they face a climate threat

The morning sun had barely risen over the Pir Panjal mountain range in the Lower Himalayas, but the air already carried an unnatural weight. To its north-east, near the region of Jammu and Kashmir's largest city, Srinagar, lies Astanmarg, a higher altitude pasture whose cooler air once drew local communities to bring their livestock grazing during the warmer months.

But in mid-May 2025, the temperature was unusually high in the early mornings. Seventy-year-old Rahim Poswal sat on a worn rug outside his family's dhoka – a temporary shelter created from mud, wood and plastic sheets – in the pasture, scanning the sky for signs of change.

Within minutes, the light shifted. Dark clouds gathered over the ridge lines, and then, without warning, hail began to lash down, hammering holes through the dhoka and frightening the grazing sheep. By the time it stopped, the sun was back, and so was the heat. The air turned thick and humid. Once foreign, such weather is becoming increasingly frequent in a place where cool mountain breezes were once the norm.

For sheep herders, what used to be a predictable seasonal cycle has now become a dangerous gamble.

“The livestock are restless,” Poswal said, motioning toward a flock of sheep huddled under a tarp. “We were supposed to start migrating weeks ago,” he said, but the grass along the route he'd be taking the sheep “didn't grow in time this year”. He paused.

“It's been like this for years now,” he added quietly. “But the last two… the last two have been brutal.”

Poswal is part of the pastoral nomadic Gujjar community. Together with its sub-group, the Bakarwal, it constitutes the third-largest ethnic group in Jammu and Kashmir. For generations, the Gujjar and Bakarwal tribes have practiced transhumance, a seasonal migration between the lowland plains in the winter and the alpine meadows in the summer, as harsh Himalayan winters make year-round residence at high altitudes impossible.

The extreme topography of Jammu and Kashmir, ranging from subtropical plains to the alpine meadows, also creates distinct seasonal grazing opportunities. Lower elevations provided fodder and shelter in the winter, while high-altitude pastures, offered rich summer grazing unavailable at lower elevations.

Every year, families like Poswal's trek hundreds of kilometres, guiding their livestock along ancestral migration routes. Now, though, increasingly erratic weather, early heatwaves, delayed rainfall and sudden snowstorms have thrown this cycle into chaos.

The delay in migration isn't just inconvenient, it's costly, Poswal explained. When the spring grass doesn't arrive on time, livestock grow weak. Some fall sick. Without access to grazing lands, families are forced to buy fodder they can't afford. “Each delay adds pressure,” Poswal noted, and the entire journey is disrupted.

Javaid Rahi is a tribal researcher and social reformer who has extensively documented the culture and struggles of Gujjars and Bakarwals. His observations and communication with nomads have shown that weather patterns have become increasingly erratic and unpredictable since 2000.

Temperatures and conditions swing drastically, he said. At times, summer arrives early in the plains, prompting nomads to begin their seasonal migration with their herds. But midway through their journey sometimes comes unexpected rain or even snowfall. It's no longer a simple shift toward warmer, more humid conditions; cold spells and snow now return abruptly, defying traditional expectations.

This disruption in the natural rhythm of the seasons has made it difficult for nomadic communities to predict and plan as they once could. “Nomads are struggling to understand these changes, and with sudden storms and extreme events becoming more common, they find themselves unprepared to cope,” said Rahi. “The weather patterns have become so unpredictable that their ancestral wisdom is no longer enough.”

Ali Sagar, a member of the Gujjar community, lives in the plains of Pampore, a small town in Kashmir Valley, just outside Srinagar. There, he looks after around 50 sheep, owned by several Kashmiri families, in return for a wage.

He acknowledges that it's an unusual choice for a nomad. When they give up seasonal migration to tend to someone else's livestock in the plains, it usually means something has gone catastrophically wrong: a family emergency, crushing debt, or violence that has forced them to sacrifice everything that defines their identity, he said.

Sagar has been involved in herding since childhood, but his own herd began to decline a few years ago, starting with a thunderstorm in 2022 that killed 12 of his female sheep. Over the next 18 months, freak weather and diseases led to some of his sheep dying, and he had to sell several others to cut his losses, leading to his flock dwindling from 150 to just 30.

“It became impossible to survive,” Sagar recalled. “I was falling into debt. The migration routes were rough [due to the weather]; we walked for miles, for months, and in the end, there were no profits, only losses. It broke my spirit.”

Two years ago, he made the difficult decision to sell his remaining herd and move to Pampore, where he lives with his wife and twin daughters in a small tent. “We stay here from March until the end of October,” he explained. “After that, we wind up and return to Rajouri,” his home city, about 165 km south-west of Pampore.

Once the season ends, the sheep are handed back to their respective owners, who care for them through the winter. Then, in March, Sagar returns to Pampore to resume his duties.

In Rajouri, Sagar takes up various jobs, mostly daily-wage labour to make ends meet. He says the hard work and little payoff from the nomadic life has led him to have no desire to restart his own herd.

“The weather has changed so drastically,” he continued. “It hasn't just affected the migration routes, it's also degraded the quality of the grass.” Sagar explained that many of the grazing slopes in the Kashmir Valley have turned barren and are no longer suitable for livestock. Even in areas where grass still grows, its nutritional value has declined.

“The grass used to be rich and nutritious. It helped the sheep gain muscle and produce high-quality wool. Now, even if they graze all day, they don't gain weight like they used to.”

Sagar's story echoes scientific findings. A 2023 study on the impact of climate change on nomadic herders in the western Himalayas, which includes Jammu and Kashmir, showed that reduced and untimely rainfall lowers the growth, quality and quantity of pasture.

Additionally, lower water availability and increased environmental disease risks lead to starvation and death of animals, as well as poorer quality of wool, milk and meat, which lowers the market price of products.

Beyond livestock losses, a more invisible rupture is taking place. The next generation is quietly stepping away from a life on the move.

A few steps away from Sagar's tent was a teenager crouched beside a sheep, shears in hand, stripping wool with effortless precision. “That's my cousin, Rafaqat. He's been helping me these days, but he has no interest in continuing this traditional life,” said Sagar.

The 16-year-old member of the Gujjar community came to stay with Sagar for a few days, having recently finished his school exams.

Rafaqat was clear about his intentions to seek a different way of life. “I don't want to roam for miles with herds, not knowing what hardship lies ahead,” he told Dialogue Earth. “I am studying hard. I want to find a different kind of work.”

A Unesco report published earlier this year found that the cultural and intangible heritage of the Gujjar and Bakarwal communities is at risk of becoming endangered as younger generations move away from pastoral life. It also said that climate change impacts on migratory routes is having an impact, as this is where key traditional knowledge would be passed down between generations.

For centuries, migratory paths served as classrooms for oral traditions. Now, with youth like Rafaqat choosing life in settlements, this knowledge chain is beginning to fray.

“It's true that younger members of Gujjar-Bakarwal nomadic communities are increasingly moving away from transhumance livelihoods,” said Mrinalini Atrey, a researcher on Jammu history and co-author of the Unesco study. “Education, climate uncertainties, and the constant threat of eviction are pushing them to seek settled lives and alternative livelihoods.”

She added: “But with every young person who leaves the migratory routes, we risk losing an entire oral tradition of ecological knowledge – about forests, subtle weather signs, medicinal plants and survival skills – that have been passed down through generations during these seasonal journeys. If the youth no longer walk these paths, this knowledge will disappear forever.”

For pastoral communities, whose lives are deeply intertwined with the land and forest, the challenge goes far beyond economic loss.

“This shift is more than just inconvenient – it's existential,” Rahi adds. “Animal rearing is not merely a livelihood; it's a way of life. And as the environment changes so drastically, their entire cultural and social fabric is under threat.”

On top of navigating a changing climate, the Gujjar-Bakarwal community also faces an increasingly uncertain legal and political landscape. Jammu and Kashmir once held special autonomous status, allowing it to have its own constitution and laws, with the Indian parliament's jurisdiction for the region limited to defence, foreign affairs and communications. However, this was revoked by the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in August 2019.

Following the introduction of direct rule from New Delhi, in November that same year, the Forest Rights Act was implemented in Jammu and Kashmir. This 2006 law recognises the rights of Indigenous tribes and other traditional forest dwellers to forest land and resources, and had already been implemented across India.

Human rights activists told Reuters they hoped this move, which recognises the grazing and seasonal resource access rights of nomadic tribes like the Gujjar-Bakarwals, would protect them. They had been facing evictions from the ancestral grazing lands they had settled on as they were seen by the government as encroaching, having in many cases had no formal ownership of the land or permission to reside there. The Gujjar-Bakarwals had also faced hostility from settled communities.

However, the implementation of the Act in Jammu and Kashmir has fallen short. In March this year, the Kashmir Observer noted that nearly 87% of land claims by Indigenous tribes, including the Gujjar-Bakarwals, have been rejected in the region. Eviction drives have routinely continued since the Act entered into force.

The granting of Scheduled Tribe status – a designation that reserves a percentage of jobs, scholarships and financial aid for historically marginalised Indigenous communities including the Gujjar-Bakarwals – to four additional groups in Jammu and Kashmir in February 2024 had also sparked fears amongst some in the Gujjar-Bakarwal community that this could eventually lead to a reduction of their hard-won political and social safeguards.

With grazing grounds shrinking, land protections denied, and nomadic households without fixed addresses lacking opportunities for formal education, many are being pushed to abandon their way of life entirely. For a community already reeling from unpredictable weather and declining pastures, this new phase of marginalisation feels not just displacing, but erasing.

As dusk settled over Astanmarg, Rahim Poswal gathered his sheep closer, watching the sun dip behind the Pir Panjal ridges.

“I've walked these routes all my life,” he said softly. “But now, every year feels like walking a path that disappears under your feet.”

For Poswal, the fear isn't just about losing pasture or income. It's the quiet erasure of a way of life his ancestors carved into these mountains, step by step, season after season.

This story has been produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

Safina Nabi is an independent multimedia journalist covering South Asia and Indian-administered Kashmir. She writes on subjects including gender, social justice, human rights and climate change for publications such as the Foreign Policy, Christian Science Monitor, Nikkei Asia and Al Jazeera.

Source: Scroll
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