Tales of resilience and food from Kargil's kitchens

“Everyone knows of Kargil, and yet no one knows anything about Kargil,” says food researcher Yash Saxena. This sentiment sets the tone for his book, Stories from a Kargili Kitchen, a compilation of essays and recipes told through the lives of people settled in the remote trans-Himalayan region.

Saxena uses food as a lens to build a series of narratives that examine the history and politics of a land deeply influenced by weather, migration and ancient trade. In doing so, he documents a culinary culture that is both diverse and distinct, and rarely discussed in mainstream food media.

The 31-year-old author, who was born across the boundary of the Kargil district in Baltal, in Jammu & Kashmir, says he “was protected by army camps, and never truly understood the region, which was a big part of the military folklore of my childhood”.

Saxena arrived in Kargil in 2022, to understand the ways of a community that had lived on the edge of conflict. Soon he connected with Muzammil Hussain, a local who runs the responsible travel company Roots Ladakh. “Muzammil wanted me to research and document the foods of his culture.” What started as a two-month recipe project turned into a three-and-a-half-year long journey along with anthropological researcher Sneha Nair, whom Saxena met during the Young India Fellowship at Ashoka University in 2017.

The opening chapter takes us to Hunderman, the last Indian village near the Line of Control, and what used to be a prominent stop in the Silk Road trade route. We meet Mohammad Iliyas, whose family is separated by the 1971 India-Pakistan war. The narrative unfolds through his memories of being a young boy caught in the tensions of the 1999 Kargil war, huddled with his friends in a school while bombs ravage the town outside.

In another, we are transported to the border with Iliyas, now a young man, hiding in a mountain cave with his villagemen as shells wreck their homes and fields. There is Haji Akhone Mussa, a septuagenarian, who grew up in Dras watching the borders shift and shape food habits post-Partition, and the Kaurs, one of the last remaining Sikh families of Kargil town. In between, we meet Mohammad Sadiq Hardassi, a flagbearer of Balti history and literature, and Acche Hajira, a teacher and feminist, who advocates the benefits of traditional foods of the region.

The stories transition between past and present, tracing memories of childhood, school life and adulthood amid geopolitical tension. What remains constant is the need for nourishment through grains, fruits and greens, along with sips of gur gur cha (salted butter tea).

The research and methodology for the book evolved over time. “We realised a family’s relationship to food cannot be captured through questionnaires, because it is the connection to their land, family, cattle, seeds, and home,” says Saxena, who interacted with around 40 families settled across 20 villages, except for Zanskar “due to its distinct cultural and religious identity”.

Saxena gathered around 46 recipes, out of which 28 made it to the book. The selection was based on factors like contemporary usage, dishes similar across communities, and those distinct to each of them. There are staples like papa, a close cousin of Karnataka’s doughy mudde; khulaq made of sattu (roasted barley), which Saxena describes as “better than a Snickers bar”; the classic chuli chhu, a concoction prepared by boiling and soaking dried apricots overnight and then blended; taki, a type of flatbread; fresh chutneys like chandang; skyu, a pasta soup that has now found a spot on fine dining menus; and azoq, a baked sweet originating in Baltistan. “Most of the recipes cannot be easily reproduced in an urban kitchen, and that is by design. Some things must be understood and appreciated in the place where they belong,” he says.

Documenting a slice of Kargil’s food culture also meant adapting to the rhythms of local life. “I have walked hundreds of kilometres with foods prescribed for trade and travel just to understand how they sustained people back in time,” he says. While shade-dried chhuli (or dried apricot) was a great way to fight xerostomia (dry mouth) at high altitudes, he learnt to forage seabuckthorn berries and ripe/dried rosehips on trails, and make tea with herbs such as Makshang (Corydalis) and Tumburuk (Himalayan thyme) to help with stomach disorders and body pains.

War shatters life. But in Kargil, the sight of apricot blossoms and buckwheat fields swaying in the wind offers hope, and reminds us that not everything is lost.