Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
Dozens of dilapidated stone buildings remain in the once-thriving border village of Martoli, in the northern Indian state. UttarakhandLocated in the Johar Valley and surrounded by Himalaya Peaks – the most notable being Nanda Devi, once considered the highest mountain in the world – the village traded sugar, pulses, spices and cloth for salt and wool with Tibetans across the border.
Nomads from many villages spent the winter months in the plains collecting goods to trade with Tibetans in the summer. But the border was sealed after the armed conflict between India and China In 1962, life in the upland villages fell into disrepair and there was little incentive for people to return.
Kishan Singh, who was 14 when he moved with his family to settle in the lower village of Thal, still returns to Martoli every summer to plow the land and grow grains, strawberries and black cumin. Even at the age of 77, his face is smiling and rosy.
His ancestral house does not have a roof, so he sleeps in a neighbour’s abandoned house for six months to make ends meet and farm for himself in this village.
“I like living in the mountains and the land here is very fertile,” he says.
In late autumn, he hires mules to carry his crop to his home on the plains so he can sell it at a modest profit.
The largest villages in the Johar Valley contained about 1,500 people at their peak in the early 1960s. Martoli had about 500 people at the time, while some of the dozen owned 10 to 15 houses.
Now about three or four people return to Martoli every summer.
Some villagers are returning to the nearby villages of Laspa, Ghanghar and Rilkot in the summer because they can now travel in vehicles within a few kilometers (miles) of their villages on a recently constructed unpaved road.
Amidst the scattered remains of earlier stone houses at Martoli, a new guesthouse has grown up to serve the few trekkers passing through the village on their way to Nanda Devi Base Camp.