'Keep our craft from slipping through the fingers of time'

"As a homestay owner with Himalayan Ark, tourism has been my main source of income since 2010. During the pandemic, we suddenly found ourselves with no income but a lot of time on our hands. This was an opportune time to revive the craft of weaving with the forgotten backstrap loom. 

Till some 50 years ago, when trade flourished between our Johar Valley and Tibet, my Bhotiya forefathers and their families led a transhumant lifestyle — we would travel in caravans with their sheep herds, traversing a fixed migration route that stretched from the trade posts in Tibet, through Johar valley in summer and down to the plains of north India in winter. At each padav (campsite), the women set up their handy pitthi – backstrap looms – and wove with the wool gathered from their sheep. 

But in 1962, the Sino-Indian war put an abrupt end to the trade and with it, to our lifestyle. Our families settled in villages and began weaving on the more conventional looms. Over the years, the craft of the backstrap loom began to fade, living only in the memories of older women.

It was the karbachh — woolen saddlebags that were strapped onto sheep to carry trade goods like salt and dry rations — that first caught our attention. Woven on a backstrap loom, its classic design and weave ensured that it was durable and weather-proof. Could we relearn the craft, and adapt it to our settled lives?

To our dismay, we could locate only a couple of backstrap looms in the village. People had either lost them, burnt them as firewood, or used its main shaft as a bat to play cricket. It was also challenging to find someone to train us. We learnt that there were still some skilled women in Paton, a village across the valley. The young weaver who came to teach us though, had to first ask Nomi Datal, a 92-year-old weaver, for a quick tutorial, despite her poor eyesight.

We spent the quiet months of the lockdown learning to cast the warp on pegs driven into the ground, and use this mobile loom to weave with the local coarse wool that nowadays is discarded by shepherds for want of a market. 

I cherish the happy hours we spent weaving fabric for upholstering chairs, and making bags and belts – and felt a quiet sense of triumph in keeping this craft from slipping through the fingers of time. 

Although we no longer weave our own clothes, our craft lives on. Travellers who come to stay with us can buy items made from local wool, often dyed with local plants, with motifs and designs inspired by nature. 

We’ll be thrilled to share with them the craft of weaving on our traditional looms, so when they go back to their worlds, they’d have experienced a touch of the magic that comes with creating our own cloth."

Read more about Himalayan Ark here

Meet Trilok of Himalayan Ark here