Photographer Varun Sikka takes us to a remote corner of Ladakh, where the roads grow narrower and the silence deeper, until both give way to something older than either, the world of the Brokpa, a community that has lived for centuries between ritual, tradition, and an unbroken bond with the land.
Tucked into folds of the Himalaya, the Brokpa keep a way of life passed from one generation to the next, held so carefully apart from the outside world that it feels less like history than like myth still being lived.
Their traditional dress, recognized as part of the community’s intangible cultural heritage, is fashioned from flowers and from heirlooms handed down through families, each piece worn as it was worn before. It is not costume. It is language. In its petals and its inherited silver, it tells the story of who the Brokpa are: their kinship with nature, and the centuries-old customs they continue, quietly and exactly, to preserve.
Varun Sikka is a self-taught photographer based in New Delhi, the city where he was born and has lived his whole life. Photography found him almost by accident, less a calling than an escape from further study, and he found his footing assisting one of the world’s leading photographers before working on his own.For Sikka, the camera is a language more than a subject. An introvert by nature, he uses it to speak to the world when words fall short, drawing from the music he grew up on, graphic novels, childhood collections of Hot Wheels and Lego, and the people he’s met along the way. He credits much of who he is to his parents, and to the good company he’s kept.
commissioned with @natgeoindia @royalenfieldsocialmission @unescoindia