They are on the move for about 8-10 months in a year. Scouts go out at the beginning of the season (after the monsoons have waned) to identify places where there is enough pasture for their flocks. Campsites are also found (not far away from the pastures) near waterbodies and shade where the families can set up camp. They normally move on after about a month to new locations before pastures dry.
This small community of nomadic pastoralists are a very hardy people who can survive on very little. As they told us “the earth is our bed, the sheep our way of life, the trees our friends and the sky our blanket”.

The Sancharis (‘those who travel’) are a small community within the larger Kuruba grouping classified as OBC. Their exact numbers are hard to tell. This could probably be because they are constantly on the move with their herds and do not have a fixed habitation – village or small town – that they return to regularly or call their home.

Herding is what their ancestors used to do and what they still continue to do. The economics of herding are still lucrative for the most part. Apart from the animals themselves their waste offers a secondary source of income being valued as high quality manure for use in agriculture.

But it has occurred to them that this way of life is beginning to get precarious. The grown-up children of many herders are getting educated and not keen to take up this way of life anymore. The flocks are not as hardy as they used to be, becoming more prone to a host of afflictions that are getting expensive to treat.
Social attitudes are also changing they notice. It is getting more difficult for them to find camping spots on open lands as they are no longer so easily available and farmers (unlike in the old days) are becoming less accommodating. A new (and unexpected) development is the growing network of high-speed roadways coming up across the state that pose some real challenges (and danger) to their flocks.

According to Apanna a Sanchari shepherd’s life is a calling, not just a vocation. It was something that every Sanchari was born into and took up with pride as he/she learnt the ways of the nomadic shepherd and their flocks. It was a way of life that gave them meaning and purpose. They found their stillness in constant
movement.

But for how long more? This is a question that came with its own dread.
Rural India is rapidly transforming. The Sanchari Kurubas will eventually have to confront this emerging reality and find a new place for themselves in this changed landscape.