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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 from
Khalatse, 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 migration from 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.
