OFFBEAT - TREKS, CAMPING AND HOME STAY IN LADAKH
Camping in Offbeat Ladakh with ChangPa Nomadic Tribes (Offbeat Ladakh)
Get in touch with us for Offbeat Treks in Ladakh with experiences like home stay and camping with remote Ladakh Tribals.
Changpa of Jammu and Kashmir
The Changpa of Ladakh are high altitude pastoralists, raising mainly yaks and goats. Among the Lasakh Changpa, those who are still nomadic are known as Phalpa, and they take their herds from in the Hanley Valley to the village of Lato. Hanley is home to six isolated settlements, where the sedentary Changpa, the Fangpa reside. Despite their different lifestyles, both these groups intermarry. The Changpa speak Changskhat, a dialect of Tibetan, and practice Tibetan Buddhism.
Only a small part of Changthang crosses the border into Ladakh, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is, however, on a historically important route for travelers journeying from Ladakh to Lhasa, and now has many different characteristics due to being part of India. Historically, the Changpa of the Lasakh would migrate with their herds into Tibet, but with Chinese occupation of Tibet, this route has been closed.
As of 2001, the Changpa were classified as a Scheduled Tribe under the Indian government's reservation program of affirmative action.
Changpa of the Tibet Autonomous Region
The homeland of the Changpa is a high altitude plateau known as the Changtang, which forms a portion of western and northern Tibet extending into southeastern Ladakh, and Changpa means "northerners" in Tibetan. Unlike many other nomadic groups in Tibet, the Changpa are not under pressure from settled farmers as the vast majority of land they inhabit is too inhospitable for farming.
Most of the Tibetan Changtang is now protected nature reserves consisting of the Changtang Nature Reserve, the second-largest nature reserve in the world, and four new adjoining smaller reserves totalling 496,000 km2. (191,507 sq. miles) of connected Nature Reserves, which represents an area almost as large as Spain, and bigger than 197 countries. Since the reserves have been established there has been a welcome increase in the numbers of endangered species. The protected areas stretch across parts of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Xinjiang and Qinghai in China.
