Inside Hanle, the Himalayan Village Where Villagers Switch Off the Lights to See the Stars
Perched at 5,290m in the barren, moon-like terrain of India’s Ladakh region, the village of Hanle has built an entire local economy around something most places have lost: true darkness. The village rates “one” – the darkest possible score – on the Bortle dark sky scale, with roughly 270 clear nights a year, and locals routinely cut the lights after sunset so visitors can watch the Milky Way emerge overhead.
That darkness wasn’t always a tourist draw. Until 1992, when a team from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics concluded the site was practically perfect for stargazing, the area was home to little more than a few nomadic Changpa families. The subsequent construction of the Indian Astronomical Observatory – home to one of the world’s highest optical telescopes – along with the Himalayan Chandra Telescope in 2000 and the MACE gamma ray telescope, drew the nomads to settle permanently, according to Dorje Angchuk, the observatory’s engineer-in-charge.
Protecting the dark from its own popularity
Growing visitor numbers eventually brought light pollution of their own, prompting the Institute to consult villagers and study dark sky reserves in the Canary Islands and Hawaii before establishing the Hanle Dark Sky Reserve in 2022 – a 1,074 sq km zone spanning six villages, a monastery and 10 telescopes. Local guides were trained in astronomy, and a network of homestays has grown up around rooftop and courtyard stargazing sessions. Rules now include no power after 23:00, blackout curtains and warm bulbs in homes, and road delineators to keep vehicles on set paths.
Visitor Shruti Sharma, a marketing professional who visited on a motorbike trip in 2017, remembers the scene vividly: “The houses had switched off their lights, everyone had their equipment out, and there was excitement in the air. When I saw the Milky Way with my naked eye, I thought, ‘what is this magic?'” At a stargazing session run by local guide Kesang Dorjey, who traces constellations with a red laser pointer, he explains that the tradition predates electricity: “The old nomads say the more time you spend in darkness, the better you can see by learning to use starlight,” noting that Changpa herders once used the pole star to navigate mountainsides at night. Celestial events still carry cultural weight for the Tibetan Buddhist community – offerings are made during solar and lunar eclipses, and a traditional song mentioning the rising of Venus is sung as a bride leaves home at dawn on her wedding day.
Modern astrotourism now runs alongside these customs. At the Institute’s annual Star Party – held each September before Hanle becomes inaccessible for winter – amateur astronomers travel from across India armed with telescopes and cameras, using only red flashlights to preserve their night vision. Astrophotographer Dhruv Patel brought his initially sceptical mother, Kiran, who was won over: “Even when I close my eyes, I can see stars and only stars. I feel like lying on the ground to keep watching them.”
The surge in visitors has strained the village even as it has raised incomes. Dorjey recalls more than 100 people gathering outside his house on a single June night last year, keeping him working until 2:30am, and says some homestays turned guests away last summer for lack of capacity. “I feel a growing tension about how we will preserve Hanle with the increasing number of tourists,” he says. Angchuk is more sanguine, comparing the rush to any viral moment: “After the sudden excitement around Hanle subsides, the number of tourists will stabilise and only serious stargazers will visit.”
Source: BBC News