The Ladakh Cheese That Won The World!

"Most of the people around here directly depend on the animals -- 70 per cent," explains Thenlay Nurboo, switching between English and Hindi.

"Yak ka sankhya (numbers) is rapidly declining," Thenlay adds. Mere family bhi bahut saal se issee ko dekhbal karke aa rahein hai (my family has been looking after yaks for many years)."

Part of Changthang district, the towering majestic Greater Himalayas are the backdrop to the stunning cold desert countryside around Durbuk, where the weather is especially ruthless all year round (even a few days ago the temperature was 1°C with chances of light snow).

Thenlay Nurboo catapulted this pristinely beautiful, far-flung area into the global limelight recently when he entered a four-kilo sample of Ladakh's soft Churpi yak cheese, special to only these parts, under his brand Nomadic Farm and it went on to win a gold medal at Mundial do Queijo do Brasil in São Paulo, which is a prestigious cheese championship in Brazil.

The cheeseman and high-altitude yak herder was unable to attend because he could not get his yellow fever vaccination in time. Nor was he even sure of the importance of the event and only sketchily aware of its reach, until calls started coming in non-stop after Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted April 22, congratulating him for his medal.

Thenlay joined the farm animal rearing profession seven years ago, a calling his family has been carrying on with for several generations. "Mere pura ancestors animal rearing mein kaam karta hai. Yak ko dekhbal karna. Pashmina goat ko dekhbal karna (All my ancestors work in this line, taking care of yak and goats). We are not fully nomadic but semi-nomadic."

A challenging, harsh way of life, Thenlay Nurboo belongs to a disappearing breed. The Changpa people, who inhabit this stark high plateau are hardy folk. They have been tending livestock for centuries, herding them towards the best green patches in this mostly barren, unforgiving land, where dusty, dark earth meets bleak mountains, sparkling snow and bright blue sky.

The Nurboos were raising pashmina goats for their wool and yak, the long-haired domesticated Tibetan ox, for milk and more. They also tend to a few acres of land, where they grow barley, peas, fruit like strawberries, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower.

Durbuk is located in the fertile Tangtse river valley and folks earn their livelihood partly from the limited agriculture occurring around there.

But Thenlay always wondered what else he could do at his family farm by way of expanding the dairy produce line.

His education at the local school did not equip him for much, he recalls ruefully. He decided to seek training at SECMOL (Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh), 18 km from Leh towards Srinagar, founded by activist Sonam Wangchuk, and a place for a parallel form of education tailored to Ladakhis and their culture.

Students at SECMOL are taught about their environment and what they could do with it. They learn how wonderful the gorgeous and rich Ladakhi terrain is and that they do not need to run off to become cab drivers, tourist guides or chase a government job or emigrate out of Ladakh.

Focus is on concepts of locally and organically sustainable farming and lifestyles and it opened a window in Thenlay Nurboo's mind: "Wahan jaane ke baad mujhe pata chala ki sustainable living kya hota hai. Livelihood kya hota hai. Organic kya hota. Yeh sab kya hota hai, tabhi mujhe laga ki I should go back and I should work with my parents (After I went to SECMOL I learned about concepts like sustainable living etc and I felt I should return to my family farm)."

Both at his parents' farm, and at a holding he took a little higher up near Chang La, that he named Nomadic Farm, Thenlay experimented with a range of products. He concentrated on dairy and cheese.

Cheesemaking in Ladakh is tough business, he discovered. The air is too dry and the weather too cold, with temperatures going as low as -20 and -30°C.

He tried -- "shuru shuru mein (at the beginning)" -- making mozzarella and Ladakhi-style artisanal tomme cheese, which is a product that came about by the marriage of French cheese-creation methods and Himalayan terroir. He went to Nepal for training.

But the more internationally and nationally-recognised kinds of cheese needed ampler warmth and humidity (at least 80 to 90 per cent according to Thenlay) and producing them was "not impossible but really very difficult."

Then Thenlay changed his line of thinking. "Mein koshish ki locally kya ban sakta hai (I wanted to try local products). So many cheese products have been made pahile se (from the beginning). Not as if we began making cheese products just yesterday. It's not like that."

"My ancestors' cheese products banata aa rahein hai, alag alag type. Ghee banana. Ricotta cheese ka ek type -- jinko hum lebu kehte hai -- woh banana. Butter and lassi banana, whey banana."

The farmer and budding young Ladakhi entrepreneur started having conversations with the local animal husbandry department and the National Dairy Development Board on how to move forward. He felt the key was developing Ladakh's native cheese strains.

"We were trying to establish the identity of the Ladakh ke Churpe. Churpe ko kaise pehchan banaye. Iske upar hum kaam kar rahein (We were working to get recognition for our local Churpe)."

"Churpe is a cheese. But till today we did not consider it a cheese but it is a variety of cheese we have been making -- pahile se banata aa rahein hai."

Churpi is made in other Himalayan locales but not the way it is made in Ladakh. Describing the cheese, Thenlay says it has an unusual and distinctive but not smoky taste: "Halka sa (a light) bitter taste hota hai, little khatta (sour), thoda (little) hard, jo yahan pe log soupy noodles aur soup mein peete hai in the cold weather. Ladakh ka cheese kahi aur nahin banta hai, kahin nahin (this kind of Churpi is not made anywhere else)."

Churpe is set from cow's milk, goat's milk and the milk of yak. But optimum value comes when yak's milk is used.

The reasons? Much higher nutritional worth because it is protein-rich and because yak do free-range grazing, making a herder's job that much more uphill, literally. "We do not feed them by hand. Yeh jo hai natural grazing karta hai. And 70 to 80 percent of unka grazing medicinal plants ka hota hai. Indirectly or directly from their milk we are having medicine."

At Nomadic Farm, a meagre but precious and treasured 1.5 litres, at the maximum, is milked from each female yak or dimo daily and Thenlay gets about 60 to 70 litres from the whole herd in a day. That in turn yields very approximately about 15 to 20 kg Churpi eventually. He also has access to 100 more yak of his neighbours/villagers in the Durbuk area.

The first step in Churpi cheesemaking, which takes place only between the months of May and November, is to set the milk and make dahi (yoghurt).

The dahi is then churned separating into butter and what Thenlay calls lassi. When the lassi is boiled, it further breaks down into a thinner liquid (whey) and curds.

These curds that will eventually become Churpi. But they have to be wrapped in a length of cotton cloth and hung for a few hours in the warm sunlight.

The drained curds are kneaded and massaged and patted into cakes of cheese. A design is carved onto each by hand. Then the cakes -- which are often of irregular sizes -- spend yet another two to three days drying in the gentle Himalayan sunshine.

A tedious, laborious task, Thenlay is helped by his nephew, his sister's son, Urgain Thustop, who has joined him in the business and "chose the same path". A kilogram of Churpe fetches roughly Rs 1,100 to Rs 1,200 on the local market.

As important as Churpe is to Ladakhi cooking and lifestyle, not much is known about the cheese beyond the region. Not many are aware of its unique nutritional overload or explored "how to send it bahar (outside)" and promote such a valuable Indian milk commodity.

NDDB and the animal husbandry department very supportively and staunchly guided Thenlay on the possible avenues of development and publicity.

Churpi was something that was already being made at his family homestead. What Thenlay did was to invest time/energy in wrapping his head around the logistics of promoting it: "Bahar ke duniya ko kaise leke jaye? (How to take it to the world?) Global or national level par marketing hum kaise kar sakte. Yeh sab banane ka maqsad tha(This was our purpose)."

"Luckily we got the opportunity to participate in a cheese competition in Brazil for the first time."

The sample of cheese was sent to São Paulo with major detailing on exactly how wonderful the qualities of this rare sustainable cheese were nutritionally and organically. It is also the end product of an fragile environment and a dying profession.

Says Thenlay: "As a young entrepreneur for the first time I have sent it out of Ladakh to a competition toh patta chala ki Ladakh ka jo Churpe ka nutritional value itna achcha hai ki world ka sabse best cheese mein se ek Ladakh ka Churpe jis ke vajah se hum gold medal hazir kiya tha(The competition recognised the value of this cheese presenting it with an award that acknowledged it is one of the world's finest)."

Since the April win in Brazil, life has swiftly gotten considerably busier for Thenlay and consequently the rhythm of his days are no longer what they used to be.

Suddenly the demand for the gold-medal Churpi cheese of Nomadic Farm is going through the roof. He was not expecting it nor had he planned for it.

His phone rings non-stop. "Bade-bade" hoteliers are pursuing Thenlay because they would like to stock the cheese and add his cheese in their recipes.

Churpi is more of a cooking cheese, with few pieces at a time to be added to curries, soups, watery noodle preparations, although its sister lebu can be had on bread, pita, rotis and so on.

"Abhi tak branding and packing nahi banaya ," Thenlay reveals with a laugh, "Har jagah se demand aa raha yeh cheese kahan milega(I had not created a packaging and branding for the cheese but demand is now coming from all quarters)."

"Abhi tak Ladakh se bahar nahi gaya. Meine bhi nahin socha -- kabhi nahi socha -- ki yeh cheese itna duniya ke level tak jaa sakta hai (It had never left Ladakh and I never thought that this cheese could go global)."

He repeats thoughtfully, incredulously, like he is telling himself, "Aaj tak mein ne nahin socha... (Till today I never thought.."

And till now when anyone came to him for some Churpi, he would weigh it out and pack it in an ordinary theli (bag)." It will take him about two months to strategise and come up with the kind of branding, packaging, pricing he requires.

Thenlay got to know that on the other side of the world, in São Paulo, the specimen of his carefully-nurtured, beloved Churpi had surged forward in the international cheese ranks, in its category, to bag a gold, only when he got a call from NDDB's Dr Jitendra Singh informing him.

"I thought itna bara award function nahin hoga. Ladakh ka Churpi kaise jeet sakta hai international level pe (I first thought it must not be a very big competition that a cheese from Ladakh can win)."

"(Phir) hamara Prime Minister Narendra Modiji bhi tweet kiya: 'Congratulations for winning gold award in Brazil...' Tab hamara rajib laga ki hamara Ladakh ka cheese mein itna dum hai! Bahut zyada khushee hua. Ladakh ke bade-bade log jo hai, unka call aa raha tha (Only after the PM tweeted could I believe that our Ladakh cheese had so much power. I was so happy. Big people were calling me)."

Good wishes and requests to meet or for interviews were pouring in from everywhere. Everyone wanted to know how he was able to take a specialised local product to such a high international level and they were congratulating him. He remembers emotionally, that he was so happy that he was "speechless."

"Kabhi kabhi toh mujhe aisa lagta hai ki sapna toh nahin hai sach mein (Sometimes I still feel it's a dream)," says Thenlay.

The dream that put a doughty little cheese, made way up in the remote, cold Himalayas, from the milk of the revered yak, on the road to hot equatorial Brazil and then to the world stage.

Can Churpi win over the world? Why not.