For decades, Konchok Dorjey grazed the world’s finest cashmere-producing goats in the arid, treeless Kharnak village in India’s Ladakh region, a high mountainous cold desert that borders China and Pakistan. But a decade ago, the 45-year-old nomad gave up his pastoral life in search of a better future for his family. He sold off his animals and migrated to an urban settlement in the outskirts of a regional town called Leh.

Dorjey now lives with his wife, two daughters and a son in Kharnakling, where scores of other nomadic families from his native village have also settled in the last two decades.

“It was a tough decision,” Dorjey said recently, sitting on the veranda at his home. “But I did not have much choice.”