Before we got to our wonderful Balti (बल्ति) lunch in Turtuk village, close to the Line of Control, we met the people who have this kind of food every day. A recent genetic study indicated that the Balti people are a mixture of Central Asian Dardic and Tibetan gene groups, but in these lands where humans were settled before the end of the ice age, each of these “parent” groups must have resulted from forgotten mixings of human genes. The story of modern humanity is such a wonderful complex tapestry that one despairs at the easy classification of hurriedly thrown together videos and magazine articles. But look at some of the faces we saw on our brief walk, and you see the whole complexity of humanity.
The village is traditional. I mean that men present a social face to strangers and women have a separate place. So it turned out to be most fruitful for The Family and me to divide the job of photographing people. She took photos of the women and girls, and I took photos of the men and boys. Even so, women are diffident about a camera. This mother carried a child on her back in a manner which we have seen across the Himalayas. In the eastern Himalayas mothers look at the camera and smile. Here women look down and away, effectively sending the message “I’m not here.”

This old lady was selling bags of apricot nuts. This is an industry in the village. Apricot kernels are dried and then cracked to extract the edible nuts (they taste a bit like almonds). The remainder of the kernel yields apricot oil, which serves as a wonderful moisturizer in the extremely dry air of this altitude. She was highly voluble and a fount of knowledge about the village. But when she saw a camera she protested, “Why do you want a picture of an old woman?” Because you have been a teacher to us was an answer that dimmed her protests, but did not stop them altogether.
I’ve shown you this face in an earlier post. Abdul Rashid is a large farmer, as holdings here go, and an entrepreneur. He owns The Balti Kitchen where we had lunch, and runs a shop with preserves and jams from his farm and orchard. His own chosen role now is to chat with passers by. He is a natural conversationalist and reminded me of the carpet salesmen in Istanbul: happy to invite you in for a chai and a conversation, and if it leads to business, even better. But if it doesn’t, then you have still had a good time. Most of the men here do not mind being photographed.
Women’s work is no less strenuous than men’s in this extreme environment. While The Family and I slowly walked up and down the sloping paths of the village, this middle aged lady steadily walked uphill with a fairly heavy load of fodder on her back. Again, she wouldn’t meet The Family’s eyes. This was such a difference from the women she’d met east of this region, The Family told me later. Even later, I thought this difference was superficial. But during the years of the pandemic past, I found that women across the whole of south east Asia, between the ages of menarche and menopause, access health facilities at half the rate at which men do. Men and women access health facilities equally outside that range of ages. All societies have this difference, it is only more visible here. Travel can open your eyes to your own surroundings.
The gender difference has an interesting effect on young boys. In a mixed group of under-10s, I saw boys who were happy to be photographed, asking me repeatedly to take photos of their antics, and others who would hide their faces. The process of differential socialization has started at this age. While young boys learn to be outgoing, young girls have started learning to quickly turn away from a camera. Interestingly, one of the boys who turned his face from the camera later came up to do a high five with me! I passed a torrent of faces on the street: the long noses of central Asia, the high cheekbones of the hills, the round eyes of the tourists, the different skin colours from different parts of India. What a wonderful mosaic, I thought as I walked towards our lunch.