The Gilgit-Baltistan village where no one says climate change but everyone talks about the weather

That was how we kept time.

We knew when the apricot trees would blossom. We knew when the glaciers would begin to melt and fill the irrigation channels. When the mulberries would ripen, when wedding season would begin, and when the first tourists would arrive, we knew when the wheat would turn golden.

Every memory I have of growing up is tied to a season.

“It’s snowing.”

I remember laughing.

“Snow? In April?”

She wasn’t calling because it looked beautiful. She wanted to show me the orchard.

The trees were already in bloom. The blossoms had opened only days earlier and were now covered in snow. I remember my mother and grandparents talking less about how unusual it looked and more concerning what it would mean for the fruit.

That was the first time I remember thinking that something had changed.

Since then, I’ve started noticing things I never paid much attention to before. Winters seem to last a little longer. Rain arrives when it isn’t expected. Harvests shift by a few weeks. Conversations almost always find their way back to the weather. Every time I go home, someone eventually says, “It never used to be like this.”

I have never stood waist-deep in floodwater myself, but many of the residents I love have.

When a glacial lake outburst flood hit Gulmit, the Karakoram Highway was cut off between my village and the rest of the country, last year. My mother and other family members suddenly found themselves stranded. Electricity was gone. Phone signals disappeared. The Internet stopped working. Trucks carrying vegetables, fuel, medicines and other essentials could no longer reach the valley.

Living hundreds of kilometres away, there wasn’t much I could do except wait. I kept checking the weather forecast. I waited for the phone to ring. I asked anyone travelling north if the road had reopened. Home suddenly felt much farther away than the distance between us.

In Gulmit, where many of my relatives live, life gradually returned, but not quite in the same way. Homes were repaired and roads reopened, yet every spell of heavy rain now carries a different weight. Conversations that once began with harvests or weddings often begin with weather forecasts and road updates.

I don’t think anyone in my village uses the words climate change in everyday conversation. But everyone talks concerning the weather. Everyone says the seasons have changed. Someone compares this year’s harvest with the last one. Someone brings up the April snowfall. Someone worries about the road after a few days of heavy rain. These conversations have become part of everyday life. They shape farming, travel, school, weddings and family plans in ways we never really thought concerning growing up.

Summer is still my favourite time of the year. I still wait for the trip home. I still look forward to eating apricots straight from the tree, sitting with family late into the evening, and watching the village fill up as everyone returns from the cities. Those things are still there. But somewhere between the weddings and the harvests, another conversation has become part of summer. Will the road stay open? Has the glacier been stable? Has it rained upstream?

I sometimes wonder what my childhood memories of summer would look like if I were growing up today. Would I remember the orchards first, or the weather updates? The family reunions, or the road closures?

I don’t know the answer.

I only know that the mountains I grew up with taught us to read the seasons. Today, we’re still learning what those changes mean.

Header image: People cross a bridge as glacial flows climb in Gulmit, GB. — photo by Naveed Roy