People
The people of the Valley are mongoloid in origin and Tibetan by culture. Their mother tongue is Bhotia a Tibetan dialect. Today, Hindi is taught in schools and most Spitians now speak it. Spiti is a free society - boys and girls mix happily together; marriages are usually arranged according to keeping ownership of the land within the 13 families who dominate the Valley. If an outsider is chosen as a marriage partner to a local person - male or female - the local person will loose the right to their inheritance of land. Property is inherited by the eldest son and it is traditional for the second son to enter the monastery
The houses in the valley are flat roofed and made of mud brick, whitewashed outside and modestly furnished inside. The animals live on the ground floor, the inhabitants on the first floor and on the roof is stored dried grass for the animals, fire wood for the winter and dry grain after the harvest. Most of the population is engaged in subsistence farming. The main crops are peas, barley and potatoes. Sheep and goats are taken to the high pastures in the summer. Pashmina wool from goats is a valuable commodity.
The staple diet in a land that cannot grow vegetables easily is barley. It is roasted and ground to a powder called TSAMPA, and this is mixed with yak butter tea in a special churn each morning. Tsampa is also added to a stew called THUGPA. Chang is the local beer extracted from barley and ARAK is the local whiskey. Great quantities of both are drunk by the men especially in winter. For the population of 10,000 people, life is hard and physically tiring at an altitude of 12,000 feet, yet the people are warm hearted and generous by nature, with a strong sense of spirituality.
