How to shear a yak

Late spring in North Pakistan is the time to bring the large herds of yaks to their high altitude summer pastures. Yaks are the source of much income to owners and in subsistence communities their value cannot be underestimated. After a long winter of temperatures down to -40°C where the animals are kept in close proximity to homes to guard against predation by snow leopards, wolves and bears, they are taken up above the 4000 m level to the alpine pastures formed when snow and glaciers melt. Here on the Shandur Pass around 4500m high, thousands of yaks and their shepherds come to the summer meadows. As they have very long winter fur, they need to be shorn. We were lucky to find many groups of shearers clipping the wool off the big hairy yaks for summer. The wool is used for carpets and for thick linings for curtains to ward off the bitter winter cold. We spent some hours with the shearers ..in a light snowfall as they worked with their traditional yak clipping shears.