If you visit Chuna Valley near Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, you’ll notice small scattered huts across vast open meadows. Enormous herds of yaks graze nearby. And if you’re lucky, a Brokpa family will wave you over and offer you something warm.
That moment alone is worth the entire journey.
Who Are the Brokpa People?
The Brokpa are a semi-nomadic tribal community native to the high-altitude valleys of the eastern Himalayas. The word “Brok” roughly translates to pasture or highland — and that name tells you everything about who they are and how they live.
They are fundamentally a pastoral people, meaning their entire way of life revolves around their animals — primarily yaks — and the seasonal movement of those herds across mountain pastures.
In Arunachal Pradesh, the Brokpa are found in remote high-altitude areas like Chuna Valley in the Tawang district, one of the most isolated and least visited regions in all of northeast India.
Where Do the Brokpa Live?
The Brokpa of Chuna Valley live at altitudes of 13,000 feet and above — elevations where temperatures drop brutally in winter and where most crops simply cannot grow.
Their settlements are not permanent in the conventional sense. They follow a seasonal migration pattern, moving their herds between higher and lower pastures depending on the time of year. In summer, they push higher into the alpine meadows. In winter, they descend to slightly lower and more sheltered ground.
The small stone and wood huts scattered across Chuna Valley are their seasonal homes — simple, functional, and built to withstand Himalayan weather.
Life Revolves Around the Yak
To understand the Brokpa, you must first understand the yak. Because for the Brokpa, the yak is not just an animal — it is currency, food, clothing, fuel, and livelihood all at once.
A single yak provides an extraordinary range of resources:
- Milk — consumed fresh, churned into butter, or fermented into cheese
- Meat — a primary protein source, especially in winter
- Wool and hide — used for clothing, blankets, and rope
- Dung — dried and used as fuel for heating and cooking at altitudes where firewood is scarce
- Transport — yaks carry heavy loads across terrain no wheeled vehicle can navigate
The Brokpa measure wealth in yaks. A family with a large healthy herd is a prosperous family. Caring for these animals is not a job — it is a way of life passed down through generations.
Yak Cheese — The Taste of Chuna Valley
If there is one thing every visitor to Chuna Valley must experience, it is Chhurpi — the traditional yak milk cheese made by the Brokpa.
Chhurpi comes in two forms. The soft fresh version is white, mild, and slightly tangy — similar in texture to a firm cottage cheese. The hard dried version is aged, deeply salty, and incredibly dense — Brokpa people chew on it for hours like a natural energy source during long days with the herd.
The process of making Chhurpi is entirely traditional. Yak milk is boiled, curdled with a natural souring agent, strained through cloth, and pressed into blocks. No factories, no preservatives, no machinery — just milk, hands, and generations of knowledge.
Eating Chhurpi in Chuna Valley — made from milk of yaks grazing right in front of you — is an experience that no restaurant anywhere can replicate.
Yak Butter and Butter Tea
Alongside Chhurpi, the Brokpa produce yak butter — a rich, golden, intensely flavored product that is central to their diet and culture.
The most iconic use of yak butter is in butter tea, locally known as Po Cha. It is tea brewed strong, mixed with yak butter and salt, and churned until blended. The result is thick, warm, savory, and nothing like any tea you’ve had before.
Butter tea is not just a beverage for the Brokpa — it is a ritual of hospitality. When you enter a Brokpa home, you are offered butter tea. Refusing it is considered impolite. Accepting it is the beginning of a genuine human connection across a very wide cultural distance.
Drink it slowly. Let it warm you. It will.
Buddhist Faith at the Heart of Brokpa Culture
The Brokpa of Chuna Valley are deeply Tibetan Buddhist in their faith and practice. Their spiritual life is inseparable from their daily existence.
Prayer flags strung between huts flutter in the mountain wind, sending prayers outward with every gust. Small shrines and stone cairns mark significant points along herding routes. The rhythm of their day is shaped as much by prayer as by the movement of their animals.
Their Buddhism is not performative or practiced only on special occasions. It is woven into how they greet the morning, how they treat their animals, and how they receive strangers who arrive at their door.
Traditional Clothing of the Brokpa
The traditional Brokpa dress is distinctive, functional, and beautifully adapted to high-altitude mountain life.
Women typically wear heavy woolen robes layered over each other, tied at the waist with a woven belt. Men wear similar woolen garments suited to long days outdoors in cold wind. Jewelry — particularly silver and turquoise — is worn by women and carries both aesthetic and spiritual significance.
Much of their clothing is made from yak wool, hand-spun and woven using techniques that have not changed in centuries. In an age of synthetic fabrics, there is something quietly profound about wearing clothing that came directly from the animal grazing outside your door.
A Day in the Life of a Brokpa Herder
Dawn begins early in Chuna Valley. Before sunrise, the yaks need to be released from their overnight enclosures and guided toward the day’s grazing ground.
The herder — often a man, sometimes the whole family — walks with the herd across the meadow. This is not passive supervision. Yaks must be watched for straying, for injuries, for signs of illness. The herder walks miles each day across terrain that would exhaust most visitors within an hour.
Back at the hut, the women are typically processing milk — boiling, churning, straining — and preparing meals. Children, where present, grow up learning every aspect of this life from the time they can walk.
By evening, the herd is guided back. The day ends as it began — quietly, physically, and completely in rhythm with the natural world.
The Challenges Facing the Brokpa Today
This way of life, as beautiful as it appears to visitors, is not without its pressures. The Brokpa community faces very real challenges in the modern world.
Climate change is altering the alpine pastures that their herds depend on. Unpredictable snowfall, shifting seasons, and changing vegetation patterns are disrupting centuries-old migration routes.
Young people from Brokpa families increasingly move toward towns and cities for education and employment. The traditional knowledge of herding, cheese-making, and seasonal migration risks being lost within a generation or two if this trend continues.
And yet — in Chuna Valley today, the herds still graze, the butter tea still brews, and the prayer flags still fly. The Brokpa are resilient in a way that only people shaped by extreme landscapes tend to be.
Why Visiting the Brokpa Matters
When you visit Chuna Valley and interact with the Brokpa community, you are not just sightseeing. You are participating in something larger.
Your presence — when respectful — tells these communities that their way of life has value beyond their valley. Buying local Chhurpi directly from a Brokpa family puts money where it belongs. Listening to their stories without rushing creates a genuine exchange.
Tourism, done right, can be one of the most powerful tools for preserving indigenous cultures. And in a place as remote and as quietly extraordinary as Chuna Valley, doing it right matters enormously.
How to Visit Chuna Valley and Meet the Brokpa
Chuna Valley is located approximately 12 km from Mago village in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh. The valley is accessible by road from Jang — the ideal base point for this trip.
- Mago & Chuna Valley day trip from Jang: 2 hours each way, 4 hours total journey
- Vehicle cost: ₹10,000 (local vehicle mandatory on this route)
- Inner Line Permit (ILP) required for entry into Arunachal Pradesh
We arrange complete guided day trips from Jang to Chuna Valley, including local vehicles, experienced drivers, and permit guidance.
📞 Call / WhatsApp to Book: 9874408179
Before You Go — A Few Things to Remember
- Be respectful. The Brokpa are not a tourist attraction. They are people living their lives. Ask before photographing. Accept hospitality graciously.
- Buy local. If a Brokpa family offers to sell you Chhurpi or butter, buy it. It supports them directly and you get to take home something genuinely irreplaceable.
- Leave nothing behind. Chuna Valley is pristine. Keep it that way. Every piece of trash you carry in, carry out.
- Go with curiosity, not assumptions. The Brokpa way of life looks simple from the outside. Spend an hour talking to a herder and you’ll realize it requires more knowledge, skill, and endurance than most modern professions.
Final Thoughts
The Brokpa of Chuna Valley are not relics of the past. They are living proof that there are ways of being in the world that modern civilization, for all its conveniences, has quietly lost.
A visit to Chuna Valley is not just a scenic drive into the Himalayas. It is a chance to sit with people who have figured out something important — how to live in complete harmony with one of the most unforgiving landscapes on earth, and do it with warmth, faith, and grace.
Come see it for yourself.
📞 9874408179 — Call or WhatsApp to Book Your Chuna Valley Trip