
By Misba Yasin
It was the kind of snow people talk about in old stories — sudden, silent, and deeply wrong.
In the last week of May, just as shepherds began their annual journey to the upper pastures of Kashmir, the skies turned white.
In Margan, Warwan, Gurez, Peer ki Gali, and the slopes above Aharbal, snow blanketed the trails meant for summer migration.
Maize fields, just days away from sprouting, were buried. Sheep and goats froze where they stood. Tents tore. Fires sputtered.
And families, used to rough terrain and long winters, found themselves fighting winter in the wrong season.
“We were moving up with the herds,” said Bashir Ahmad, a Gujjar herder from Kulgam. “Then it started snowing. We thought it would stop. It didn’t. We lost ten lambs in one night.”
The upper belts of Kashmir have always been tough terrain. But there was a rhythm — winters harsh but predictable, summers brief but generous.
This snow broke that rhythm.

It’s not just about cold; it’s about timing. Timing is everything when you live by the mountain’s clock.
Nomadic groups like the Gujjar-Bakarwals and Chopans rely on seasonal migration to survive.
Every spring, they leave the low valleys with their animals, setting up temporary homes in the meadows. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s work.
Their sheep feed the markets. Their cattle keep the dairies alive. Their movement feeds the economy quietly, from the edges.
But when the weather turns on them, there’s nowhere to go.
“This isn’t a minor disruption,” said Mohammad Yousuf Tarigami, a veteran politician from Kulgam who visited some of the affected families.
“They’ve lost crops, they’ve lost livestock, and in some places, they’ve lost the very season they depend on.”
The Marxist leader of Kashmir called for immediate relief and field assessments, but also something deeper — respect for a way of life that’s under pressure from all sides.
“These are people who have lived with nature for generations,” he said. “They don’t ask for much — just grazing access, free movement, and not to be forgotten when the weather shifts.”
For many, that shift has already begun.
In Gurez, villagers dug out maize saplings with bare hands, hoping to replant. In Warwan, a group of children tried to warm a newborn goat by cupping its body over coals. In Aharbal, elders debated whether it was too risky to continue the ascent.
“There’s no pattern anymore,” said Hameeda, a Chopan woman camped above Shopian. “Last year it rained too long. This year, it snowed too soon. What comes next?”
The government has yet to issue a full damage report. Relief hasn’t reached many of the higher elevations, where roads are narrow, steep, and often blocked by fallen trees or rockslides.
But time moves fast in the mountains. Crops can’t be replanted forever. Lost animals don’t return.
What remains is a feeling, of being caught in the middle of something larger than weather.
Snow will melt. That’s certain. But the fear that summer is no longer summer will linger.
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