Leh,a year later

At the Chowkhang Gompa was Dorjey Namgyal,a taxi driver who lost his wife and youngest daughter in the flood that night. Dorjey says he managed to drag two of his daughters outside his home in Choglamsar village,but could not save his wife and their youngest child. Dorjey,40,says he now leaves his daughters with his sister whenever he is travelling. “I lost my wife and daughter,now I don’t want to lose the other two. I had to run with my daughters to the nearest mountain and stay there for two days without food and water. I was helpless because I feared that if we went down,the flood might come again,” says Dorjey.

A few days after the floods,Dorjey,who earlier worked with tourist agencies,applied for a bank loan and bought a taxi. Since last winter,Dorjey and his daughters have been staying in a prefabricated room in Solar Colony,which was set up to rehabilitate the victims. Dorjey and others received Rs 2.45 lakh from the government and additional food supplies for over three months,but Dorjey knows that won’t last. “The government has done a lot for us,but we didn’t get all that was promised to us. They gave us prefabricated houses,but no one came to ask us if we needed more help,” says Dorjey.

But his daughters now want to go home. This is the tourist season and things are looking up for Dorjey—according to official figures,Leh had 63,000 tourists till June this year and estimates are that the figure will cross the one-lakh barrier by the end of the season. Now,he can pay back his loans,get his daughters into a good school and build a house of his own.

For people in Leh who rely on tourism for their livelihood,the months from June to September are when they can earn some money. Starting November,the roads to Leh remain cut off from the rest of the country for six months. Surviving these winter nights,when temperatures drop to -20 degrees Celsius,is tough.

In Leh town,houses are being built and new roads are being laid. But there are hardships. “I lost everything I had in the floods—my house,money,everything. I am worried about my son. I want him to become an officer but I don’t have money to send him to a good school,” says Motup Dolma.

While Leh awaits its tourists,people in some of the remote villages around the town say they have nothing to look forward to. “I have nothing but this field. I used to grow barley,apples,apricots and other vegetables in my garden and fields and sell them in Leh. But now my fields and garden are buried under huge rocks and mud. It will take ages before I can get anything done here. I hear that construction is going on in Leh and that people there get help from outsiders. But we have nothing. How are we going to fill our stomachs? Can’t the government provide my son with a job so that he can earn bread for us,” asks Deachen Spaldon from Nimoo village,where the flood struck a day before it came to Leh.