Perched high on a ridge in Chamoli District, the village lies in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand. 

The Garhwal Himalaya are known as Dev Bhoomi, the ‘Land of the Gods,’ whose sacred peaks are home to the mighty Hindu gods, Shiva and Parvati, and the 640 million other gods said to inhabit the region.

But Uttarakhand is also one of India’s poorest states, with low levels of urbanisation and a mainly rural economy. 

Here, villagers move seasonally between three settlements at different altitudes, ranging from 2200m to 2800m. They produce wheat, barley and millet, lentils, potatoes, seasonal vegetables, and hay for winter livestock fodder. It’s exceptionally tough work: fields are ploughed with oxen, crops harvested with sickles and then hauled by the backload up and down the steep mountainsides. 

But life is changing rapidly. When I first worked in the village in 2003, it took half a day to trek to, there was no power and telecommunications. Only the first five years of primary education was provided for in the village.

By 2012 the village had a telecommunications tower, irregular electricity and a road. New schools mean that it is now relatively straightforward for young people to obtain education up to high school level and some are also attending university, often by correspondence.

It has often been the young people who have been at the forefront of creating these changes.We explored some of these shifts in our first film in the village, Lifelines.

These infrastructural transformations have far reaching implications for the social and cultural life of the village. As education increases, so too has outmigration, as men, in particular, leave in search of work. Some families now reluctantly send their children out to find better quality education. Large combined families are splintering into small nuclear households. 

Nevertheless, much about life here remains the same. Villagers survive through hard agricultural labour, often carried out collectively. Loss and happiness are shared, and belief in the power of the gods continues to bind people to each other and the land.