EDITOR'S NOTE: Stories from a Kargili Kitchen by Yash Saxena — in collaboration with Muzammil Hussain and Sneha Nair — is a tender, sensory journey through the kitchens of one of India's most storied landscapes, tracing how a community sustains itself through ritual, memory and the quiet grace of everyday cooking. The following excerpt is republished with the kind permission of Penguin Random House India.
***
BORN IN 1955, Haji Akhone Mussa has lived through a time when the rhythms of life in Kargil remained tethered to the old ways, untouched by modernity. He is reminded of how rampant poverty and starvation used to be in these distant hamlets in those days. His memories are shaped by a past where survival was a communal effort, and every detail of daily life, from food to clothing to architecture, was shaped by long, unrelenting winters.
He speaks of poverty not as a phenomenon, but as a presence—silent, constant and deeply familiar. Resources became scarce, trade routes closed abruptly and unemployment soared with the establishment of national borders post 1947. Families often subsisted on what little they could gather: roasted barley flour (sattu), fibrous semi-edible grasses and darba (buttermilk). He recalls it all matter-of-factly, his voice steady. His history sits beneath his skin like an itchy scar that must not be scratched.
Yet when the Indian Army arrived in the region, it marked a turning point. It brought with it roads, infrastructure and employment. Young men from the villages found small roles as porters, labourers and guides with various Army regiments. Government schemes to subsidize essential grains began to reach even these remote valleys. Though wheat had once been a rarity, Haji sahab still smiles at the memory of buying a kilo of gundum (wheat flour) for two rupees.
During the early months of the Kargil War, the people of these mountains did not wait to be called—they offered themselves. Villagers from across the district volunteered as porters, scouts, cooks and guides. The Army was comprised of soldiers from all over the country and few were familiar with this terrain, especially the monumental, rugged, rocky mountains of Kargil. They were baffled by the way the land seemed to push back at every step. ‘Three steps up, one down,’ they would say. But the locals knew these mountains like the back of their hands. Haji sahab was among them—steady-footed, swift and quietly patriotic.
They would spend most of their nights with the soldiers at these icy mountain posts, sharing rations amongst them without lighting any fires, lest they give away their position. Stuck by the hearty, energy-dense foods, the soldiers would joke, ‘Fauj ko hume yahi ration me dena chahiye!’—this is what should be given to the Army as rations. Haji sahab would always carry extra sattu, ‘gamphey’ in the local dialect, packed tightly in cloth, knowing the men would need it.
That chapter of his life, though now decades past, still lives in him. His relationship with the soldiers didn’t end with the war. Today, he speaks with quiet pride when he says his son now serves in the Indian Army.
***
SATTU, or coarsely ground roasted barley flour, is possibly one of the central building blocks of Kargili foodways. This ubiquitous ingredient is consumed plain, in hot and cold drinks, as a component in more complex dishes, and even as a filling for traditional sausages. Sattu is in everything.
For Kargilis, the word ‘sattu’ is a simple Urdu/Hindi term used to describe a range of complex ingredients derived from their barley harvest. People use the term interchangeably, relying on context and conventional wisdom to understand its intended meaning. There are three main ways in which nas (barley) is processed for a seemingly endless variety of uses:
Narjen: Grinding unroasted barley to create a fine flour. This flour is used for takis or different kinds of pastas.
Gamphey: Roasting barley until the grains start to pop, then roughly grinding them. It is said that the resulting flour should feel like sand—it shouldn’t stick to the palm when dropped from one hand to the other. This flour is consumed directly by adding it to beverages or using it to make khulaq.
Zanphey: Roasting barley lightly, without letting the grains pop. The resulting flour is milled finer than gamphey but coarser than narjen. It is then mixed with flour made from stranma (local flash-boiled and dried peas) in a 5:1 ratio. This flour is used to make barley-heavy traditional dishes like papa and marzan.
These flours are traditionally milled in water mills—small setups that harness the power of mountain streams. Typically, the heavier, coarser flour settles at the bottom while the finer flour comes to the top. Historically, the flour at the bottom was always preferred, as finer flour is considered less nutritious and lacks body. Milling was also done in colder seasons to help the flour last longer without spoiling.
Unlike regular barley, Tibetan barley—the variety grown in the region—lacks a tough outer shell, which makes it far easier to thresh and process. Some experts believe this trait evolved through thousands of years of selective breeding in the high-altitude environments of the region.
The difference in their value and palatability becomes all the more stark when one thinks of the Roman punishment of decimation, where one soldier out of every ten that fled from the battlefield was punished by being killed by the remaining nine, and the survivors were given barley (hulled) instead of wheat in their weekly ration.
Because the barley used in sattu isn’t heavily processed, it retains more nutrients, fibre and essential minerals. It also acts as a potent prebiotic, helping to promote the growth of healthy gut bacteria.
Sattu has a naturally low glycaemic index, releasing energy slowly without spiking blood sugar. This is one of the reasons it’s so embedded in Kargili cuisine. Elders say one should never drink anything on an empty stomach without first adding a spoon or two of sattu. After a hard morning in the fields, the first drink must always include sattu so as not to shock the hungry stomach. A steady intake of gam-phey ensures lasting energy throughout the day, without the heaviness of a full meal. Elders say no one used to ever leave their home without a pouch of gam-phey handy.
Modern adventure sportspeople in Ladakh also rely heavily on this magic powder. They often mix crushed raisins or dates into their stash of gamphey to make a quick and nutritious sweet drink. Many claim it’s their lifeline when living in tents at remote locations or covering long distances on mountaineering expeditions.