The sky is a startling cobalt, endless, pondering over everything far and wide. Skidding across it are three fluff-cloud swans in formation, tails steering the wind. Winging their way across the blue, they leave other amorphous patches in their wake. Down below, the land is coloured in ochre, a hundred shades of unidentified brown, spits of black and the ubiquitous hue of beige dust that hovers over the lonely, barren surfaces of the trans-Himalayan mountains. Naked peaks gird this austere landscape, glowering down at everything below, grim and forbidding. At -11 degrees Celsius the late autumn air is dry and unbelievably cold. I stand squinting at Ladakh’s wilderness where sunlight shimmers and dances through dust clouds, searching for that tell-tale sign of a tan nimbus undulating over the land. This is not a forsaken planet for all that it may seem so. Tucked away amongst the folds of these ‘northern plains’ called Changthang are innumerable herds of changthangi, that nimble goat that produces, arguably, the finest pashmina wool ever. In many tongues, that beautiful, soft as silk, woven magic is called ‘cashmere’, envied and prized, an object frequently handed down through generations, so venerable is its texture and delicate exquisiteness. I am a ghost figure sheathed in dust as I wait. The changthangi are returning home before sundown. Home to the changthangi is Kharnak, not far away, also home to their herders, the Changpa tribe. It is an ancient settlement, a small cluster of squat, grey houses built of stone scrounged from the surrounding wasteland, mortared in mud with an inexpert hand. Centuries ago, while crossing over from a frigid, windswept Tibetan plateau, when borders did not exist, did not restrict, Kharnak would have been an untidy scattering of snug, yak-hair tents called rebo. Not anymore. I visit its community hall, encased in a haze of incense. Over the chant of Buddhist prayers and slow drum-beats, I speak to a Changpa shepherd. In an island of our own making, hushed amidst steaming tea and the aroma of cooking rice and vegetables, I realise that a hard, dark reality has settled in. Clinging to stone walls, as grimy as the soot layering the dented cooking pots. “Who knows how long my generation will continue herding,” the shepherd tells me, his face a map of wrinkles and creases, thick jacket and trousers worn and dusty. “We are getting older and our children despise herding. The world is changing, so we send them off for an education. They witness the outside world and do not return.” His dark, rheumy eyes reflect profound pain beneath a film of existential uncertainty. They have the same crunched-up look I have come to expect on Changpa faces, eyes that gaze into the distance, looking for herds that are nowhere to be seen. Leh, the capital city, spreading its DNA like amoeba gone haywire with a recalcitrant gene, is a fierce, potent magnet for the young, progress a stronger incentive. The children do not return except on vacation breaks. “What will you do?” “What can we do?” My heart stumbles. In his gaze, there is no hope left. It’s that excruciating conundrum yet again, old versus new. “When we cannot take out our flocks to graze any longer, we will give up herding forever. Sell our animals. Die in our villages. Our children are gone anyway.” A group of teens behind us laugh and ham with each other, a cell-phone in every hand. Climate change has been brutal here. Cloudbursts turn villages into rivers of mud. River ice runs thin. Herds devour scarce grass, trample the rest. Poor compensation for the priceless wool prohibits a safety-net. I look up to see my three perfect swans flying towards the horizon, only to distend into smudges of disenfranchised clouds as the sun leisurely slips behind the curve of batholithic granite. Purple darkness will creep up insidiously to swallow them whole…eventually. Will the Changpa and their herds share a similar fate? My crystal ball is malfunctioning. Yet, I must believe. What no hardship, no weather condition, no paucity of pasture could do to the Changpa, advancement, too, will fail to slay. Tailing nightfall, dawn is dew upon umber grass.