The Last Shepherdesses of Changthang

In Ladakh’s Changthang plateau region, women carry the twin griefs of miscarriages and climate change, finding solace in resilience, prayer, and each other.

Kunzes Dolma, a yak herder, stands beside her herd in the remote Sultak village of Changthang, Ladakh — a high Himalayan plateau. Credit: Umar Mir for More to Her Story

On a hot July afternoon, the wind on the Changthang plateau swept over an arid, stone-strewn desert. The altitude, a lofty 15,400 ft, thinned the air. Silence stretched for miles, broken only by the moaning of yaks clamouring through the other-worldly land of sky and rock.

Here, Tsering Dolkar, 20, stood in a grazing pasture with her flock of over 150 Pashmina goats. She said she had returned home from Leh, nearly 150 kilometres away, where she is studying to become a pilot. Each morning, she wakes at 6:00 AM to shepherd the goats toward the hills. 

“Whether it is raining, snowing, or I am feeling unwell, this is where I stay,” she said. “This is our life.”

But even Tsering sees the changes. “Earlier, these hills had grass and snow till late summer. Now, by July, it is just stones and dust,” she explained. Her family, like others, must move farther up each year in search of better pasture.

A 2024 study by researchers from Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology substantiates these experiences, finding that climate change, sedentarization and overgrazing are degrading the region’s fragile pastures. Further research indicates that these same environmental pressures have posed significant yet underreported risks to maternal health. A study published in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth analyzed 126 cases of stillbirths in high-altitude areas, highlighting that these environmental stressors contribute to adverse pregnancy outcomes in such regions.

Miles away, in Sattoo Village, Sonam Dogery, 42, recently suffered her third miscarriage during a bitter winter. “The baby just stopped moving,” she said.“Even when I was bleeding and in pain, I kept herding the goats,” she said from her home roughly 128 kilometers from the nearest hospital. “Who else would do the work?”

Dogery never cried. Not then. Not after. Her experience is typical of the burden carried by many women in this region, where medical care is distant, maternal trauma is taboo, and grieving is often hidden behind a daily routine on the land.

Tsering Dolkar, a 20-year-old nomadic herder, with her 150-strong Pashmina goat flock in the high Himalayan pastures of Parma village, Changthang, Ladakh. Credit: Umar Mir for More to Her Story

For generations, communities dotting the Changthang plateau have practiced mobile pastoralism, moving their flocks with the changing seasons across high-altitude rangelands. Their way of life has uniquely adapted to the trans-Himalayan terrain, with native livestock like Pashmina goats and yaks bred to survive on sparse vegetation and extreme weather.

But this deeply rooted tradition is now under threat.

Women in particular are carrying a heavier physical toll, trekking longer routes and facing greater risks while pregnant or unwell. As pastures vanish, so does a lifeline. The sale of Pashmina wool, a product that makes up the bulk of household income in Changthang, once provided financial stability and independence for women. Now, shrinking grazing zones and unpredictable are threatening both income and identity.

The Changpa, a semi-nomadic tribe in Changthang, live in scattered tents and low-roofed homes across Ladakh’s harshest terrain. There is no cell service, no internet and electricity is available only briefly, at dusk. The nearest hospital is hours away by car. In this remote way of life, women depend on each other to carry on: Maternal complications, miscarriages, stillbirths, infant deaths — they are all the community’s responsibility, and the community’s grief. Recent studies indicate that maternal health complications are rising, and without words for depression or anxiety women are told to pray harder, try again, or simply endure. “There is no one to talk to about what happens inside the heart,” said Tsering.

Dogery pointed to a patch of bare earth. “This used to be grassland. Now we walk hours more to find grazing ground,” she said. “And with our goats, we walk even when sick.”

Changtang is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. Snowfall, which typically falls between October and April, is no longer reliable, transforming the once-lush hills into dry, dusty rocks. Glaciers in the nearby Lungser Range that once fed streams are shrinking. 

“The dust chokes us now,” said another woman, who herds in Parma village. “Earlier, we grazed near home. Now everything is far and harder.”

Sonam Dogery, a 42-year-old nomadic woman from Satto village in Changthang, sits outside her mud home after suffering a third miscarriage in the high Himalayas. Credit: Umar Mir for More to Her Story

The shifting ecosystem is also changing how communities function. Seasonal migration begins as early as January, compared to the usual embarkation in April. Families split for months. Young girls are increasingly withdrawn from school to help make ends meet. 

Roughly 3 kilometers away, in a nearby settlement, climate stressors are quietly reshaping lives. Tashi Tsering’s fraught pre-term labor had occurred during an unusually harsh winter, when mobility was restricted and timely care was almost impossible. Health workers in Changthang's local Primary Health Centres (PHCs) told More to Her Story that erratic snowfall and extreme weather might have worsened the conditions during Tsering’s pregnancy. After her baby’s death, Tsering did something no one in her village had done before: she asked a nurse for comfort.

“I told her I feel cold inside. Even when it is warm outside. Like something in me is frozen,” she recalled.

The nurse, a volunteer from Delhi, embraced her and suggested she write down her feelings. Tsering didn’t know how to write. That night, she asked her son, Tanzin to teach her.

Now, she keeps a small diary under her mattress, tying the diary with red thread. She calls it her “wind book.”

“I write what the wind tells me,” she smiled. “Sometimes it says, ‘You are strong.’ Sometimes, ‘you are not alone.’” 

She still doesn’t know how to read and write, but draws lines in the page which she said helped give relief to her heart. “When there is no doctor, no medicine, we have only each other,” she said.

In a place where silence once weighed heavier than the cold, women are beginning to carve spaces to share, support each other, and adapt. Informal support circles at local monasteries provide emotional relief, while several NGOs and community organizations are stepping in to address both maternal health and climate resilience. Groups like Every Infant Matters provide maternal nutrition and hemoglobin testing programs, the Leh Nutrition Project improves access to health and education for women, and LEDeG promotes climate-resilient livelihoods and women’s empowerment. These initiatives aim to ease the physical and mental burdens caused by longer treks, reduced grazing lands, malnutrition, and extreme weather.

Experts stress that integrating maternal health into climate adaptation planning — through mobile clinics, nutritional support, and mental health services — could significantly improve outcomes for high-altitude communities. As these programs grow, women in Changthang are not only surviving but actively shaping solutions to the challenges they face.

A retreating glacier in the high Himalayas of Ladakh, where rising temperatures are accelerating the pace of melting and reshaping the fragile landscape. Credit: Umar Mir for More to Her Story

In Parma village, a handful of women gather at a local monastery, not to churn butter or spin wool, but to talk. And to pray.

“We speak about our bodies. Our dreams. Our pain,” she said. “Sometimes, we just laugh. That is healing too.”

While no formal support systems exist, these informal circles offer rare relief. NGOs and volunteers have started awareness drives around maternal nutrition and hygiene. But mental health remains taboo. “Once some people came to talk. But after they left, nothing happened,” one woman recalled. “We still face this alone.”

Experts warn that climate change is becoming one of the gravest threats to maternal and newborn health. The World Health Organization stated it “threatens multiple causes of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality,” including stillbirth, preterm birth, and mental health risks. Research reviewers reinforce this, noting that ‘extreme heat, drought, and food insecurity — common in thinning pastures — are directly linked to pregnancy complications’

To address this, local players are stepping up: Pragya, a Himalayan-focused NGO, runs mobile health vans, delivers women’s nutrition support, and implements snow and water management systems across remote high-altitude communities. In Changthang, WWF-India facilitated a groundbreaking Rangeland Council in 2025, bringing together women’s groups, herders, scientists, and officials to co-create conservation and pasture-restoration efforts. 

Experts propose what might come next: integrating maternal health into climate adaptation planning, such as embedding mobile prenatal clinics and mental health outreach into climate-recovery funds. These measures could offset rising risks posed by long treks, food insecurity, and isolation.

In Changthang, every woman who survives loss, climbs higher each year to reach sufficient rangelands, or teaches others to tend goats in a dying pasture, also cultivates a form of resistance.

“I will never forget my babies,” said one woman, pouring tea as goats grazed nearby. “But now I know, my sorrow is not a curse. It is just part of me.”