Leh
Ladakh Tourism
The New Areas
Drok-pa Circuit
CKhalatse- Domkhar - skurbuchan Achinathang - Hanudo- Diama - Dah and return.
Down
the Indus, between Khalatse and the Shayok -Indus confluence, live a people,
known as Drok-pa, Buddhists in name, but racially and culturally distinct from
the rest of the Ladakhis. Two of the five villages inhabited by them may now
be visited, Dah and Biama. The route follows the Indus down fromKhalatse, past
the villages of Domkhar, Skurbuchan and Achinathang, along a fairly good road.
In the gorge of the Indus the sun's heat, reflected off bare rocks and cliffs,
is frequently intense. The same heat makes it possible to take two crops every
yera from the fields. Fruit is also grown- apricots, apples, walnuts and even
grapes. Skurbuchan, Domkhar and Achinathang are attractive villages, with an
air of modest prosperity about them.
But the special interest of this region is less the landscape then its Drok-pa
inhabitants. A minuscule community of perhaps no more than a couple of thousand,
their features are pure Indo-Aryan, and they appear to have preserved their
racial purity down the centuries. Their culture and religious practices are
more akin to the ancient pre-Buddhist animist religion known as Bon-chos than
to Buddhism as practised in the rest of Ladakh.
One curious feature is their abhorrence of the cow, or any of its products.
They have preserved their ancient traditions and way of life partly through
the celebration of the triennial Bono-na festival, a celebration of the harves,
and partly through their songs and hymns. One of these is a description of an
ibex-hunt for the ibex is specially sacred to them. Another recalls their migrationfrom
Gilgit - an event which must have occurred well before Gilgit came under the
influence of Islam. Their language is said to be akin to that spoken in Gilgit,
and by immigrants from Gilgit settled in Dras. Such a small and racially and
culturally homogeneous community is bound to have much to offer scholars in
the fields of ethnology and social anthropology.
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