A simple pair of socks found overseas created my new obsession

It all begins with a pair of socks.

Walking down a back alley in Leh, the historic capital of the Ladakh region in the Indian Himalayas, I spot a pair of handmade sheep’s wool socks. I knead my fingers into the lumpy wool, inhale their barnyard smell, decide they must be mine. As I walk to the counter, though, my brain makes a clear demand: create, don’t consume.

Flags above Leh, Ladakh.Credit: iStock

This, I suppose, is because I’ve spent the past few days watching local women in the market knitting beanies and headbands to sell alongside their bags of apricots and apples. Ladakhis, I’ve learnt, have a long tradition of weaving with pashmina, yak and sheep wool. The production and trade of these yarns have been central to Ladakhi livelihoods for over 600 years, particularly among nomadic communities from the south-eastern Changthang region bordering Tibet. Not so very long ago, every Ladakhi household was spinning yarn and weaving their own cloth to see them through the harsh winters, when temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees.

Times, however, are changing. The “wool” the women knit with in the market today, and the yarn in the craft shop I now find myself in, has never been anywhere near an animal. Alas, the shopkeeper tells me it’s all he has.

Back in our guesthouse I find a “knitting for beginners” YouTube tutorial. Once I learn the classic knit stitch, I’m unstoppable. I click away until midnight while my husband snores beside me.

The synthetic wool, though, quickly starts to depress me. I take to Instagram and track down a local natural textile business – Lehvallee – and the young owner Kunzes Wangmo invites me to visit their workshop. There, the artisans demonstrate how they spin the wool, dye it using plants including marigold and madder root, and weave it into feather-soft wraps on click-clacking thag-sha foot looms.

Credit: Jamie Brown

While Wangmo can’t sell any wool to me, she directs me to another pashmina store that can. There, hidden in a cupboard, I find it: untreated cream sheep’s wool, perfectly imperfect, still dotted with little flecks of grass and manure. With that I knit a small square that a tailor turns into a purse for me. I buy another two balls and knit a gigantic scarf, and discover knitting is replacing my least healthy travel habits: Instagram and shopping.

So yes, I tell my husband, we could spend our final days in Leh hiking to the 500-year-old Leh Palace or motorbiking to Alchi monastery. But I’d rather keep following this thread.

Another local textile business, We Are Kal, offers studio visits. I take a 20-minute taxi to the German owner’s home studio where she shows me reams of sheep’s wool drying in the sun, talks about the cultural significance of the Changthang tribes and their wool, and introduces the artisans who are weaving carpets in the courtyard. The visit turns out to be a highlight of our three weeks in Ladakh.

On our final Leh afternoon, I stumble across a market where artisans are busy knitting beanies, socks and vests from sheep, camel and yak wool. Usually I’d simply buy these things, but instead I purchase the artisans’ yarn to make my own gifts to give friends back home (lucky them).

As I experiment with this new wool on the flight out of Leh, I realise this strange new obsession of mine has opened a doorway into Ladakh’s textile traditions, and pulled me off the trodden tourist trail. At a time when overtourism is tearing destinations apart and social media is pushing us all into the same places, maybe this is how we need to approach travel: following specific types of food, architecture, music or art to forge more unique and satisfying travel experiences, and inspire creativity in us all.