Families prepare for Losar in advance as we do for Christmas. The homes are thoroughly cleaned and decorated with flowers and auspicious signs are painted in flour on the walls. Cedar and juniper branches are gathered for burning as incense. It is important that debts are settled, quarrels are resolved, new clothes are acquired and…

Last winter, in February, the day before I was due to leave Spiti and travel to Shimla, on the first leg of my long journey back to my home in London, I was asked by one of his relatives to give Tenzin a lift to Shimla in my jeep. While chopping wood for the family...

A lady called Janet came with me on a couple of my Spiti visits. While sitting in the jeep during the long road journeys, she knitted children’s sweaters while in the jeep as we travelled along the bumpy roads to Kaza the capital of the Spiti Valley. Another passenger, Madeleine was very taken by this...

Help us to raise £5,000 for vital eye testing equipment. We are delighted to launch our first ever Christmas Appeal to fund the equipment for a much needed Eye Treatment Centre, to be based at our Eco Community Centre, in Kaza,  the main town in the Spiti Valley. We are grateful to have already sourced...

The Kaza Eco-Community Centre recently won the Award for Low Carbon Building at the United Nations Climate Change conference in 2016. PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH A VISION CARE CENTRE It is estimated that there are thousands of blind people in the region, with about 2,500 people requiring cataract operations and refractive treatment. This number would double...

In the spring, usually in April when the snow has melted and the new shoots of grass appear on the hills, the sheep, goats and cows are brought out to graze once more. The sheep are sheered for their wool in April, and after the autumn harvest the women will wash and dry the wool...

This animal is essential to all households for providing a means of farming for those living in this mountainous region. The plough is attached to this animal for ploughing the land, helping with the harvest and carrying heavy loads. The Yak gives milk for drinking, making butter tea, and cheese, dried in the sun and...

One of the positive sides of Climate Change is that the Spiti Valley is wetter and warmer in summer and it is now possible to grow apple trees, so many farmers have created orchards of 25 to 50 trees which are thriving very well. However, there are no fences round their orchards and the village...

When I first came to the valley in the early 1990’s, festivals were a time to dress up, put on the traditional dress, your family jewellery and put your Lingti shawl over your shoulders.