Summer snowfalls bring difficulties to the cashmere Highlands – Cashmere Observer

By Misba Yasin

It was the kind of snow that people were talking about in old stories – sudden, silent and deeply wrong.

During the last week of May, just as the shepherds began their annual journey to the superior pastures of cashmere, the sky has become white.

In Margan, Warwan, Gurez, Peer Ki Gali and the slopes above Aharbal, snow covered the trails intended for summer migration.

The corn fields, a few days before germination, were buried. The sheep and goats frozen where they stood. The tents torn. The fires spray.

And families, used on damaged land and long winters, found themselves fighting winter in the bad season.

“We were going up with the herds,” said Bashir Ahmad, a Gujjar herd from Kulgam. “Then he started to snow. We thought it would stop. This was not the case. We lost ten lambs overnight. ”

The superior belts in cashmere have always been difficult terrain. But there was a rhythm – the harsh but predictable winters, the brief but generous summers.

This snow broke this rhythm.

It is not only a cold; This is timing. Timing is everything when you live according to the mountain clock.

Nomadic groups such as the Gujjar-Bakarwals and the Chopans are counting on seasonal migration to survive.

Each spring, they leave the low valleys with their animals, installing temporary houses in the meadows. It is not nostalgia. It’s work.

Their sheep feed the markets. Their cattle keeps the dairy in life. Their movement nourishes the economy quietly, from the edges.

But when time turns them against them, there is nowhere where to go.

“It is not a minor disturbance,” said Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, a veteran politician from Kulgam who visited some of the affected families.

“They have lost cultures, they have lost cattle, and in certain places, they lost the very season on which they depend.”

The Marxist chief of cashmere called for immediate emergency and field assessments, but also something deeper – respect for a lifestyle under all sides.

“These are people who have lived with nature for generations,” he said. “They don’t ask for much – just an access pasture, free movement and not be forgotten when the weather changes.”

For many, this change has already started.

In Gurez, the villagers have dug young corn plants with bare hands, in the hope of replanting. In Warwan, a group of children attempted to warm up a newborn goat by taking his body on coals. In Aharbal, the elders debated if it was too risky to continue the ascent.

“There is no reason,” said Hameeda, a chopan woman camped above Shopian. “Last year it rained for too long. This year, he snowed too early. What comes then? “

The government has not yet published a complete damage report. The relief has not reached many highest elevations, where the roads are narrow, stiff and often blocked by fallen trees or rock shifts.

But time moves quickly in the mountains. Cultures cannot be replanted forever. Lost animals do not come back.

What remains is a feeling of being caught in the midst of something bigger than time.

The snow will melt. That’s sure. But the fear that summer is no longer summer persists.

Follow this link to join our WhatsApp group:: Join

Click for more details