Chasing a Dream

Story and photos by Linda Cortright

The opening of the first Cashmere Center in India’s High Himalayas was the result of a red pick-up truck in western Maine and a chance meeting on a cold afternoon in Central Asia.

I remember the day a red pick-up truck carrying four cashmere goats pulled into my farm in western Maine. There were two black goats and two white goats, and if they had had ten little fingers and ten little toes, I would have counted each one as a proud mother inspects her newborn.

More than 20 years have passed since that afternoon inearly November marking the beginning of a new life chapter, trading the insatiable quest for professional success in exchange for a pasture of happy kids. Occasionally, I sit back in quiet amazement recalling those four endearing goats, Daisy, Echo, Elf, and Esprit, who were not only responsible for changing my life, but also led me to help change the lives of nearly 80 women halfway around the world. It is too crazy not to be true. In 2007, I attended a conference in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a country with an impossibly difficult name to pronounce and a vague location somewhere south of Russia. I had little knowledge of Kyrgyzstan or its neighboring “stans,” Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. But, Bishkek had been chosen as the site of the first international cashmere producer’s conference focused on bringing awareness (and revenue) to indigenously sourced cashmere. More than 40 cashmere professionals, including buyers, processors, farmers, and me — a farmer turned magazine editor — were assembled, and though we could not stop China’s checkbook from completely consuming the global cashmere supply, we could at least try.

Bishkek is not on most people’s bucket list and I suspect it will take more than a 5-star hotel with promises of exotic spa treatments and vanilla candles to earn a “thumbs up” on Trip Advisor. In fact, January’s cold, overcast skies do little to enhance decades of sterile, cement-colored Soviet style architecture circumscribed with sidewalks entombed with ice. But tucked inside a small, second-floor conference room, where the conversation was 24/7 cashmere, the unwelcoming outdoors was of little note, even the flashing red neon restaurant sign advertising “Texas Barbecue” across the street eventually faded from our view. It did, however, succeed in luring us for dinner one night, at the conclusion of which it was unanimously agreed that a second visit would not be necessary.

I sat across the table from a pair of cashmere buyers from Tajikistan, an Iranian scientist specializing in cashmere fibers, an Afghani businessman from the Aga Khan Foundation who was keen on promoting Afghan cashmere and even keener on finding a Kyrgyz girlfriend — at least for the duration of the conference — and a thoroughly charming Indian man in charge of researching sheep and goat husbandry in Northern India. But the person I took note of the most was seated quietly at the end of the table, his name was Konchok Stobgais, and as we went around the table that first day giving introductions, Stobgais (pronounced Stub-gus) said he was a nomad — a nomad from Ladakh. A second nomad was also seated at the table, a man whose name I have now forgotten, but I remember he spent two days traveling just from his village in Nepal to catch the flight from Kathmandu, and then on to Delhi, to Moscow, and finally, Bishkek. He had never been on a plane before traveling more than 30 hours to attend the conference, and his wife had given birth to their first child while he was in transit.

In hindsight, if I thought a truck full of goats signified a new chapter in my life, meeting Stobgais would ultimately signify a new chapter in the lives of many.

Cashmere is sourced from semi-nomadic people, like Stobgais, living in prime cashmere growing regions. The goats typically graze in high altitude pastures (above 12,000 to 14,000 feet) in Mongolia, China, India, and Afghanistan, although lesser quantities, and often of inferior quality, is available from surrounding countries, including Nepal, Pakistan and Iran. Following a dramatic change in international export regulations, China began to commandeer the cashmere market in the 1990s and now “pre-treats” (scours and de-hairs) 93% of the global cashmere supply.

Konchok Stobgais visiting a cashmere farmer in Kyrgyzstan during the first annual Cashmere Producers Conference in Bishkek.

Dr. Phunchok (center) examining cashmere in the field surrounded by a Mongolian from Mercy Corps. and a nomad from Nepal (right)

Beshbarmak!