Raikas

"Our home is under the sky. our village is the forest. For 300 days out of 365 we are on the road. Using the motor road you get to your destination quickly. But we move along the narrow by-paths in the fields. Others would get lost. Instead of taking us to the end of a journey, these paths always take us to new places. Each new place is a destination. In each new place, we again sleep under the sky, our pillows. Our home is the sky. I find it wherever I go." -Kherji, a sheep herder

Raika camel herders boiling camel milk for tea. Sadri, Pali District, Rajasthan.

In the village of Sadri, twelve to fourteen hours by jeep south west of Jaisalmer, there is a woman who knows everything about camels and the desert and raikas. If you want to understand herders, go meet Illse...

I make the trek down to Pali to meet Illse and visit Lokhit Pashu Palak Sansthan, a local NGO that works with herders in the region looking at issues of land rights, animal health and general community initiatives for camel and sheep herders. The Raikas are fascinating and a complete shift from the musicians and performers of Jaisalmer.

Lonely men and thier animals. Opium and chai. Smoldering fires and camel milk for months on end. Endless walking. Falling wool prices and rising medicine costs. A hostile Park Services and sea of police and small scale beurocrats trying to keep the camels out of lands they have grazed for hundreds of years. Water pumped in from Punjab, farmers pumped in from Gujarat.

Vegetarian pastoral nomads who don't make use of any animal products, except for the milk of their camels. More stories of Shiva and Pabuji and the first camel and his assigned caretaker. Thirist and hunger and desperation. Dignity. Sons who refuse to follow their fathers into the hills. Girls who refuse to marry herders. Death fests and jaggery and protests with ten thousand goats in an intersection blocking a minister's car...

a Godwar Raika, drinking tea during a community meeting