Changpa tribe

Why is in news? MHA grants permission to foreign tourists to visit Hanle for Ladakh Nomadic Festival 2023

To boost tourism in Ladakh, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has granted permission to foreign tourists to visit and stay at Hanle in the Changthang region for the upcoming Ladakh Nomadic Festival scheduled to be held on the 15th and the 16th of July.

Prior to this, the foreigners are restricted in these areas.

The festival is being held to promote and preserve the Nomadic cultural heritage and the way of life of the Changpa tribe of the Ladakh region.

This is the third edition in the series of the Nomadic Festival which is being organized by the Ladakh Art Culture and Languages Academy of UT Ladakh.

The aim to organize this festival is to showcase the livestock of the Changthang area, and its unique nomadic way of life and to preserve and promote their cultural identity.

Changpa tribe:

A semi-nomadic Tibetan group known as the Changpa can be found primarily in Jammu and Kashmir and the Changtang region of Ladakh.

A lesser number was largely relocated in order to create the Changtang Nature Reserve and now lives in the western parts of the Tibet Autonomous Region.

There were 500,000 nomads residing in the Changtang region as of 1989.

The Changpa are pastoralists who live at high altitudes and mostly breed yaks and goats.

The Changpa people of Ladakh who are still nomadic are known as Phalpa, and they bring their herds to the town of Lato from the Hanley Valley.

Hanley is home to six remote settlements where the Changpa and Fangpa, sedentary people, live.

The Changpa are Tibetan Buddhists who speak the Changskhat dialect of Tibetan.

The rare Pashmina fibre is produced by the highly coveted and bred Changra goats, which are raised by the Changpas (Cashmere wool).

The purpose of raising the Cashmere goats (Changra goats) is for their fibre rather than for their meat (pashm).

The finest fibre of all goat hair is called pashmina (or paşm in Persian).

The Changpa pursue a definite objective to work as much as possible in the summer months and to rest in the winter, when it is impossible to work owing to the extremely low temperatures. This tribe’s motto may be “work hard, play hard.”