Billing and udhaar for every shop in Ladakh
Summer crowds, winter stock and village udhaar: the bill and the notebook move to your phone.
Why a Ladakh shop earns its year between the first tourists and the first snow
A summer that has to pay for the whole year
From the first tourists of the warm months the counter hardly rests. A bill is half written when the next person asks for change, and one bus party can empty a shelf in an hour. Then the evening comes, the cash box is full of notes from fifty hands, and you cannot say which were the good hours. In January the same shop sits quiet, and by then nobody remembers which weeks were really good.
The last lorry before the pass closes fills your winter shelf
The last lorry that gets up before the pass shuts decides what your shelf holds for the cold months. In Ladakh that shelf holds more than flour and oil: the woollens the summer visitors did not take sit beside them, with money tied up in them until May. The choice is made in the same few autumn weeks that the summer's last customers are still at the counter.
The family that comes down from the high pasture
A family that keeps goats on the high pasture comes down to the bazaar only a few times a year. It takes flour, oil, a blanket and a pair of boots on one visit, and the money comes on the next. Between the two visits the shop owner has only a line in a notebook, and nobody can say later whose line it was.
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Tools for a shop that is busy in July and quiet in January
Credit book (khata)
A page for the family with goats on the high pasture, so what it carried up to the pasture is read out article by article when it comes down.
Godown stock
The room behind the shop where bags of flour, rice and sugar wait for January, counted on their own and never mixed up with the shelf in front.
Low stock warnings
A warning when candles, lamp oil or woollen socks fall under the level you set in October, while a last truck may still make it over the pass.
Bills on your phone
A bill for a trekking group's food for the week, with rice, oil and dal by the kilo, sent to the guide's phone before the group sets out.
Daily reports
The best fortnight of July set against August, so you see when the tourists came in and when they thinned out.
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Leh's Main Bazaar, where Ladakh sells its woollens and apricot jam
A shop owner in any valley of Ladakh knows the bazaar in Leh, because so much of the region's selling is seen there.
- Leh's Main Bazaar Road sells souvenirs, woollens, pashmina shawls and turquoise jewellery, and local cheese, apricot oil and jam are sold at Bazaar Road and Shar Market.
From the autumn count to the first customers back in May
The afternoon the bus party came
A Ladakh summer is made of a few afternoons. Open the days once the visitors have gone and find the one when a bus party came and bought half a shelf of woollens. Set it beside the plain days around it. You see how much of the summer one party paid for, and how much the ordinary days gave.
The front rack changes with the month, the account does not
In July the rack by the door holds sun hats and postcards, and in November mufflers and gloves. In October, read what is left of the mufflers and gloves beside the summer's hats, and decide how much of each goes on the last lorry up the pass.
A page that waits through the winter for the family
A family from the high pasture comes down once in autumn and once in spring. What it carried up in autumn is read when it comes down in spring, and the shop sees how much flour and oil one pasture family needs for a winter.
What Ladakh shop owners ask before they start
My shop in Leh shuts for part of the winter. When I reopen, is last summer's selling still there?
Yes. Every bill and every day's sales stay on your account. When you open in spring, look up any day of last summer and see what sold before you place the first order.
A trekking guide takes gloves and socks for his group and pays once the group has paid him. Can his page stay open for a fortnight?
Yes. Open a page in his name and write each item with its date. When he pays, write it on the same page, whole or in part, and the last line shows what is left.
A bus party buys scarves for twelve people, and each wants a bill of his own. How do I do it without a queue?
Make the first bill, then the next, one for each person with his own items, and send each to that person's phone. A bill takes seconds, so twelve bills take less time than twelve handwritten slips.
Pashmina from the Changthang and apricots from Kargil's villages
Pashmina wool is produced in the Changthang region of Leh, which sustains over 10,000 nomadic herders. Changthang is high, cold grazing country, and the herders move their goats across it with the seasons. Pashmina is the fine undercoat the goats grow against the winter cold. The shawls and stoles sold along the Leh bazaar are made from that wool, and the shop owner who sells one is asked again and again whether it is the real thing.
In August 2025 over 10 tonnes of fresh Kargil apricots were flown to Mumbai, sourced from villages such as Batalik, Gargardo and Gongma Kargil. The apricot is a fruit of the valley villages, grown on terraced land beside the water that comes down from the mountains. A shop in those villages sees the same trees bearing every summer, and sees the dried fruit go into sacks for the winter, long after the fresh fruit is gone.