Stories from a Kargili Kitchen begins with a likening of the physical contours of the human body to the borders of the state: an analogy fitting for a people whose relationship with food can be conjectured as caused by, despite, or regardless of the conflicts that shaped the region. For the reader, it is hard not to experience anemoia—a longing for a land or time unknown—as author Yash Saxena, who was born in Jammu and Kashmir, carries on along a purposeful wander through the homes of Kargil, the joint capital of the Union Territory of Ladakh and a key site of combat during the 1999 India-Pakistan war. While determined to introduce the everyday Kargili to the greater India, Saxena does so rightly without overlooking the role of conflict in the Kargili’s life: their identity with the land and the food in the backdrop of the state and its ever-looming military presence.
Stories from a Kargili Kitchen succeeds in what most books aspire to be in the days of swipe and scroll: a start-from-anywhere format and a book of interest to readers and non-readers alike. A cookbook of Kargili dishes, a coffee-table book of intimate portraits, or a book of anecdotes from across the region—the book can be worthy of both the occasional browser and the cover-to-cover peruser. The name and map coordinates of the exact village that each tale hails from adds an impressive detail at the start of each chapter.
If all you are looking for is rare recipes from a little-known cuisine, the book is quick to impress. Saxena, “a traveller, storyteller and mountaineer whose work moves between food, art and identity”, does a commendable job of tracing the Kargili foodways shaped by topography and climatic conditions with recipes born from scarcity and resilience. The reader learns what cooking for occasions might look like, whether it is the scale of the preparation, such as the communal cooking of popot (a soupy dish of turtle beans, carlin peas and trotters), or the interplay of festivities associated with seasonal agriculture and different faiths in the region. The festival of Mamani, celebrated by both Muslims and Buddhists as an homage to their forbearers who made the soil tillable, is a fine example. The traditional blood sausages (shanang) made of goat meat during the Ladakhi New Year Losar, or the judicious use of barley to brew channg during the annual harvest festival Bono Na are other memorable mentions.
Through the fleeting mentions of the names of dishes and their equivalents in the many tongues of Kargil, the author also allows a teaser into the linguistic affluence of the region. The speakers are shown to effortlessly code-switch across not just languages but language families—from the Indo-Aryan sister languages of Urdu and Shina to the Sino-Tibetan Purigi, Balti and Ladakhi.
Local ingredients such as the Himalayan turnips, yak meat, black turtle beans, mountain thyme and buckwheat flour find their presence throughout the book. The apricot in all its honourable forms (raw/ripe/dried/crushed/pressed for oil) leaves one reaching for their travel agent instead of the neighbourhood grocer, as some of these can only be found in the markets and homes of Kargil!
The book is a taster menu for Kargili culture: bite-sized portions, but a well curated one that fuels your appetite for more
If you, like me, hold little knowledge of Kargil, then you may treat this book as an ideal site for a check-dive into the region and its people. The reader is introduced to storytellers from across backgrounds—Sikhs of Hoshiarpur, Bhotos or Purigi Buddhists, Muslim descendants of Nurbakshias, the mountain tribe of Brokpas, to name a few. The ethnic diversity of the storytellers is only matched by their varied pursuits: an organic farmer who teaches you to identify a high-quality apricot; a culture revivalist who began as the accidental custodian to the material history of Kargil; and a proponent of Islam proud of its animistic variation particular to its place—these are stories that remain with the reader.
For history enthusiasts, the book contains glimpses of trade routes that date to the Silk Road. Stories by descendants of Alexander’s Macedonian army and families of Yarqandi traders from China who settled in Kargil in the 20th century as borders hardened, serve as peepholes into a forgotten past.
While transporting the reader to Kargil with an evocative imagery, Saxena remains realistic about his experience as a non-native. This is evident in the careful caveats made about the difference in the palatability of the Tibetan barley among the uninitiated, or in the inability of the traveler’s bowels to digest the toxins in chandang, a normal feat for Kargili children. It is also visible in the way the reader’s attention is gently guided to the inconspicuous, urging them along a perspective without preaching it. However, the occasional slip-up, such as the contentious phrasing of the greater India as the “mainland” reveals the pitfalls of an outsider view, despite their best efforts.
If, as the old adage goes “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”, Stories from a Kargili Kitchen is a taster menu for Kargili culture: bite-sized portions, but a well curated one that fuels your appetite for more.
(Anjali Nair is an independent researcher interested in language and food as windows into culture. She holds a PhD in linguistics and has worked in language documentation, including co-authoring A Grammar of Gaddi, a pastoral Himalayan language)
This article was originally published in the May 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth