Meeting the shepherds of Shegli region of inner Himalayas.

Namaste 🙏

Hope you all are doing great!!!

We were on our way down from the top of the mountain and we were about to reach Shegli village. Just before reaching the Shegli village, we were enjoying the mesmerising views of the evening all around us. There were snowcaped mountains, a dramatic sky, and a feeling of satisfaction inside us from the adventure that we were doing.

As now we were turning towards the front of the mountain, and also towards the middle of the main Kullu Valley, we were seeing a broad Valley beneath us.

The scenery that we were seeing was just looking like a painting from a very renowned artist as it had all the elements of a good scenery in it. A dramatic sky with shapes of cloud, mountains with snow on top, evening, shades in the sky and abroad, Valley in between the mountains with a river flowing in between. What else can you imagine in a painting?

Just imagine seeing these beautiful views and riding on a motor bike on empty roads with no one around you. We were feeling that kind of vibe and it was incomparable to anything we’ve experienced before.

Meeting the shepherds—

We were travelling from past one hour, and we didn’t see or encountered any human being yet until we were about to reach Shegli village. The first people we encountered while entering the village were shepherds and we were really happy to see them with their ship, moving towards their village after a long day of gazing their sheep in the inner Himalayas.

It’s really hard to find people who are full-time Shepherd nowadays in any part of the world because of the modernisation of everything. No one wants to be a Shepherd anymore.

I was really keen about the lives of the shepherds that we were just crossing by so I decided to park my motorbike on the side of the road and spend some time with those shepherds. In spite we were getting late, we wanted to have this experience as these are the stories that will last for a lifetime with us.

So we parked our motorbike on the side of the road and approached this person, whose name was Rajesh. He lived in the Shegli village and he was a full-time Shepherd. I was really amazed to see a young person like Rajesh being a full-time Shepherd and I was really curious about his life being a Shepherd.

He told me that he owned 25 to 30 sheep himself, but during the summer time, he takes sheep of whole village with him for gazing in the wilderness on the top of the mountains that are nowadays covered with snow. He told us that at that time when he takes the sheep of whole village with him, there are about 600 sheep with him and he has to take care of all of them along with a few other shepherds that are with him from the same village.

He told us about his adventures and how he started when he was a little kid with his father, and now he takes care of it himself. He told us that they have to live on the top of the mountains for about three months during the time of summers and monsoon, and they are cut off from the world at that time. There is no cell phone signal, no network and no modern facilities are there on The Mountain. They have to survive in tents and cook their own food every day to survive in the cold areas of Himalayas.

He also told us the same thing about the future of shepherds. He also had that realisation that no one wants to be a Shepherd now, and he confirmed that he didn’t even want his coming generations to be Shepherd. So I guess this is the last generation that we are seeing of Shepherd and after that, they will be very rare people in the world who will be full-time Shepherds.

So knowing this fact, we appreciated him for the work that he was doing and the profession that he chose after knowing all the modern facilities that he has to give up to live on the mountains and take care of sheep all the time.

We said goodbye to him, and now it was time to get back on track of reaching our village.

That’s all for today.

Thanks for passing by.

Peace ☮️