Photos show life slowly returning to abandoned Himalayan villages in India

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An aerial view shows the abandoned village of Martoli, in the northern Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, on Oct. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Satish Sharma)

Lichen grows on the stone walls of a structure in the abandoned village of Martoli, in the northern Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, on Oct. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Satish Sharma) — An aerial view shows the abandoned village of Martoli, in the northern Indian Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, on Oct. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Satish Sharma)

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11:44 PM on Tuesday, October 14

By SATISH SHARMA

MARTOLI, India (AP) — Dozens of dilapidated stone buildings are what is left of the once-thriving border village of Martoli, in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. Nestled in Johar Valley and surrounded by Himalayan peaks — the most notable being Nanda Devi, once considered the tallest mountain in the world — this village had traded sugar, lentils, spices and cloth for salt and wool with Tibetans across the border.

The nomadic occupants of several villages spent the winter months in the plains collecting goods to be traded with Tibetans in the summer. But the border was sealed after an armed conflict between India and China in 1962, disrupting life in the high villages and leaving people with little incentive to return.

Kishan Singh, who was 14 when he left with his family to settle in the lower village of Thal, still returns to Martoli every summer to till the land and grow buckwheat, strawberries and black cumin. At 77, he has a smiling, ruddy face.

His ancestral home has no roof, so he sleeps in a neighbor’s abandoned home for the six months he spends in this village cooking for himself and farming.

“I enjoy being in the mountains and the land here is very fertile,” he says.

In late autumn, he hires mules to transport his harvest to his home in the plains to sell it at a modest profit.

The largest of the Johar Valley villages had about 1,500 people at its peak in the early 1960s. Martoli had about 500 people then, while some of the dozen or so others had 10 to 15 homes each.

About three or four people return to Martoli each summer now.

A few villagers are returning in summers to the nearby villages of Laspa, Ghanghar and Rilkot as they can now travel in vehicles to within a few kilometers (miles) of their villages on a recently built unpaved road.

Among the scattered remnants of earlier stone homes in Martoli, a new guesthouse has sprung up to cater to a few trekkers who walk past the village en route to the Nanda Devi base camp.