Shifting Lubra

2021-current
Lower Mustang, Nepal
with Yungdung Tsewang

In the high desert of Nepal’s Mustang region, settlements shift as climate change makes ancestral lands increasingly uninhabitable. Dhey and Samdzong gradually move to new sites nearer perennial rivers as glacial retreat and declining snowfall lead to the disappearance of mountain streams. In Lubra, a river swollen by increasing rainfall washes away fields and homes. Will the village slowly shift uphill, or to a different site altogether? These questions face communities across the Himalayas; many address them by doing the work of making and remaking shifting landscapes.