Grant Winner – Bhavita Bhatia

Cowboys of the Lost Horizon

A Documentation & Conservation Project on the lives of Nomadic Himalayan Horse Traders

Bhavita is a storyteller, horse conservationist, adventurer, and ecofeminist with over a decade of experience around the pastoral communities of the trans-Himalayan region in India, Bhutan, and Nepal. Her work has been featured in National Geographic, Explorer’s Club, and the New Yorker.

She recently partnered with the National Geographic Society on a 5000-kilometer foot traverse across northern India, walking for over a year toward the world’s most isolated nomadic communities in the Himalayas. Bhavita’s documentary work reflects her love for the wilderness, which led her to chase Himalayan nomads across the most remote corners of the mountains.

She has been meticulously building a grassroots project from Kathmandu to study and support the lives of horse herders and yak nomads, particularly the fast-disappearing ponies across Dolpo, and the larger Himalayas and regions like Dhorpatan, Mustang, Manang, Gorkha, Everest, and Sikkim.

Over the last several years, she has been documenting the threatened ponies of a remote region of the sacred ranges of Mount Kailash. Dolpo (also referred to as ‘Dolpa’ in lower Nepal) is among the most inaccessible regions, a massive stretch of rock and snow, splintered across Tibetan grasslands in the upper reaches of Nepal.

This last stronghold of traditional high-altitude pastoralists and horsemen is a neglected and a largely forgotten minority; with whom she has been closely living and working within Nepal.

Through her project, Cowboys of the Lost Horizon, Bhavita aims to create a long-term multimedia project that will document the last generation of horse traders and study closely the few horsemen that have chosen to stay back in their homelands. She also hopes to bring attention to the threatened horses across the highest passes of the Himalayas and to bring support to the horse communities of Dolpo and the larger Himal. Roads are now being constructed in Dolpo, raising critical concerns for the survival of the horses in a once inaccessible region of Nepal.

This exploration hopes to help spark a respectful and long overdue dialogue between the people of remote highlands, their national governments, and the world at large; one that eventually results in a deeper appreciation of – and support of – their human rights and threatened lifeways at a time of profound change.

To know more, please visit www.cowboysofthelosthorizon.com