Above the villages of upper Humla lies summer grazing country, used for a few months a year and empty the rest. Herds of yak and chauri, the yak-cow crossbreed, move up as the snow retreats and down before it returns. The stone huts there are seasonal dwellings, not ruins.
Where the high pastures are
They sit above the permanent settlements, on the shoulders and basins between the top of the cultivated ground and the snowline. In upper Humla that means the ground above Kermi, above Yalbang and Yangar, and the wide open country north and east toward the Limi side and the border.
What makes them usable is not soil but water and aspect. Grass grows where meltwater runs and where the slope faces the sun for enough of the day, which is why the pastures are patchy and specific rather than continuous. A herder can name the ones that are good in a dry year and the ones that are not.
Below the pastures is the cultivated belt, terraced and irrigated and worked intensively, which is covered in the guide to terraced farming. Above them is nothing but rock, and the passes: Nyalu La (Nyalu Lagna) and the basin around Selma Lake are past the last useful grazing.
Yak, chauri and why both exist
The yak is the animal that makes high-altitude life possible, and it is also badly suited to half the ground people actually live on. Yak do not do well low down and are unhappy in heat, which in this district means anywhere much below the upper villages for any length of time.
The chauri, a cross between yak and hill cattle, is the answer to that. It tolerates a wider altitude band, gives more milk than a yak, and can be kept nearer the villages for longer in the year. Most households in the upper valleys work with a mix rather than one or the other, and the mix shifts with the altitude of the village.
| Animal | Where it works | What it is kept for |
|---|---|---|
| Yak | High pasture, poorly suited to warm lower ground | Load carrying, wool, dairy, dung for fuel |
| Chauri, the yak-cow cross | A wider altitude band, closer to the villages | Milk above all, plus dairy products and load work |
| Sheep and goats | Steeper and rougher ground than cattle will use | Meat, wool, and traditionally as pack animals |
| Horses and mules | The trails rather than the pasture | Freight over the passes and along the corridor |
The wool matters beyond the household. Highland wool feeds the weaving traditions of the wider region, described in the guide to weavers of the far west.
The grazing year
The calendar is the part travellers usually miss, and it explains a lot about how a village feels on the day you walk into it.
Through the winter the herds are low, kept near the villages and fed on stored fodder and crop residue. As spring comes and the snow lifts, animals move up in stages, following the grass as it appears rather than going straight to the top. High summer is the period on the high pastures proper, when the huts are occupied and part of the household is living up there. Then the movement reverses through autumn, and everything is down before the passes close.
The consequence is that a village in July is not the same village in November. In the high season a proportion of the working-age population is on the pasture rather than in the settlement, and the people you meet in the houses are those whose work is there. Anyone judging a place by how busy it looks should know which half of the year they are seeing.
The huts
Pasture huts are single-room dry-stone structures, low, thick-walled and roofed with whatever is available. They are built for weather rather than comfort, and they are used hard for a few months and left standing for the rest of the year.
A traveller crossing high ground will pass them and should read them correctly: an empty hut in October is not abandoned, it is out of season, and it belongs to somebody. Using one without asking, taking wood or dung from around it, or leaving anything behind are all bad manners rather than opportunism, and in country this thinly populated news travels.
The same applies to the animals. A yak herd on a narrow trail has right of way for reasons of physics, and the etiquette when a caravan meets you is covered in the guide to Karnali mule caravans. Stand on the inside of the trail, not the drop side.
Kiang and the shared high ground
On the open plateau country in the far north, near the border, the pastures are shared with wildlife. The kiang, the Tibetan wild ass, uses the same kind of high grassland, and blue sheep occupy the steeper rock above it. This is trans-Himalayan fauna rather than the wildlife of the Nepali hills, and it belongs to the country beyond the crest.
Grazing competition between domestic herds and wild grazers is a live issue on that ground, as is predation on livestock, and neither is resolved by anything a visitor does. What a traveller can do is keep distance, avoid pushing animals into moving, and not treat a herder as an obstruction when the herd is on the trail.
What this has to do with the road
The road up the corridor changes the arithmetic of the pasture economy, slowly. Freight that once came only by mule can now, when the track is open, come by vehicle as far as Simikot, and that affects what a household needs to keep animals for. The change is not fast and it is not uniform: the road is unpaved, single-lane and seasonal, and it stops well short of most of this ground.
What has not changed is that above the road head, everything still moves on legs. The corridor guide covers how far wheels actually get, and the Humla district guide sets out the livelihood pattern of the district as a whole.
What comes off the pastures
Milk is the daily product and it is mostly not drunk as milk. It becomes butter, buttermilk and hard dried cheese, all of which keep in a way fresh milk does not in a place with no refrigeration and no road to a market.
Butter carries a second role beyond food. It is burned in lamps in monastery and household shrines throughout the Buddhist villages of upper Humla, and it goes into the salted butter tea that is the standard hospitality of the high country. A visitor will be offered it, and refusing outright reads badly.
Wool is the other product, sheared and spun and worked at home through the winter months when there is time for it. Hides, horn and bone all have uses, and very little of an animal is wasted.
Then there is transport. A yak carries a load over ground and in conditions no wheeled vehicle reaches, which is why the animal remains central even where a road has arrived at the district headquarters.
Dung, fuel and how a hut works
Above the treeline there is nothing to burn, which is the fact that shapes daily life on the pastures. Dried dung is the fuel, collected, dried and stacked, and it is a managed resource rather than waste. Stacked dung outside a hut is somebody's winter, and taking it is theft rather than scavenging.
Inside, a hut is one room with small openings and a hearth, and a night in one is smoky by design because the smoke is what keeps the roof timbers dry and the insects down.
Visitors should not expect to use them and should not assume an empty one is available. The etiquette is simple: ask if there is anybody to ask, and camp if there is not.
What a traveller sees, and when
Timing decides whether any of this is visible. A trek through upper Humla in the post-monsoon weeks of October and November crosses pastures that are emptying or already empty, with the huts shut and the herds moving down. The country looks abandoned and is not.
Go earlier, in the pre-monsoon weeks or through the summer, and the same ground is occupied: animals out, huts in use, and people living up there. That is the version worth seeing, and it is also the version that coincides with the harder travelling weather lower down.
Whichever season you arrive in, the behaviour is the same. Give herds room, do not photograph people without asking, do not walk through a working animal enclosure, and remember that a pasture is a workplace rather than scenery. Slow travel in Nepal covers the wider version of that argument.
Winter, when everything comes down
The other half of the year is the one visitors almost never see, and it is the half that explains the arrangement.
Once the passes close and the snow arrives, the herds are at the villages and the pastures are unreachable. The summer is therefore not only about grazing but about putting away enough fodder to get through winter. A bad grazing season shows up months later as a shortage of feed rather than as an immediate problem.
Households in the upper valleys spend that period on indoor work: wool, repairs, and the maintenance that the working season leaves no time for. In parts of the Karnali, seasonal movement down toward warmer districts has long been part of the pattern for the same reason.
For a traveller the practical point is that a winter visit to upper Humla is a different proposition entirely, with the high country closed and the villages in their quietest and hardest season. Winter in Karnali covers what that looks like across the region.
Before you travel. Humla is a restricted border district and conditions change without notice. Roads close, flights are cancelled, permit rules and fees are revised, and the Hilsa crossing opens and shuts to different categories of traveller. Confirm the current position with the District Administration Office in Simikot, the Department of Immigration, or a registered local operator before you commit to a route.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a chauri?
A crossbreed of yak and hill cattle. It tolerates a wider range of altitudes than a pure yak, gives more milk, and can be kept nearer the villages for longer in the year, which is why most households in upper Humla keep a mix of both.
When are the high pastures occupied?
Through the summer, with herds moving up in stages as the snow retreats in spring and coming down through autumn before the passes close. In winter the animals are low, near the villages, on stored fodder.
Are the stone huts on the pastures abandoned?
No. They are seasonal dwellings, used hard for a few months and left standing the rest of the year. They belong to households in the villages below. Do not use one, take fuel from around it, or leave anything in it.
Can visitors stay on the high pastures?
Not in the huts. Travellers on this ground camp and are self-sufficient, carrying food, cooking fuel and water treatment. There is no lodge network above the villages anywhere in upper Humla.
What is a kiang?
The Tibetan wild ass, a wild grazer of the trans-Himalayan plateau. It uses the same open high grassland as domestic herds on the northern edge of the district, alongside blue sheep on the steeper ground above.
How should you behave around a yak herd on a trail?
Stand still on the inside of the trail, against the slope rather than the drop, and let the animals pass. Do not try to walk through a herd or move animals yourself. The same rule applies to mule caravans and for the same reason.
Does the herding season change what a village looks like?
Considerably. In the high grazing months part of the working-age population is living on the pastures rather than in the settlement, so a village in midsummer can look far quieter than the same village in late autumn.