The local story
A herders' meadow with very little written history
Chopta does not have a monastery founding date or a royal story. Its history is the history of grazing. For generations, Lachen's herders and Dokpa families brought yaks and other animals up to these meadows in summer, when the snow melted and the grass came, and moved them lower before the winter. The open, flat valley floor and the low, grazed turf are their work as much as nature's. We have not found a reliable written account of the name's meaning, so we will not guess.
What the valley does have is two very different faces. In winter, from about December to March, the river slows and freezes into sheets and pools of ice between the meadows, with snow on the slopes. In summer the same ground becomes a flower meadow. Tourism here is recent and small, a short detour from the Gurudongmar road, and that is part of its value: twenty minutes from the main route, you often have the place largely to yourself.
