Ever since he can remember, Babar Afzal has moved to a rhythm few recognise. As a teenager, he sold abstract art for eye-watering sums without a day of formal training. Later, he dove into ethical hacking. And just when his life seemed to settle into the predictability of a consulting career, it took a sharp turn, the one towards goats.
In the 2010s, during one of Afzal’s routine trips home to Srinagar, he came across a news report that changed the course of his life: 25,000 pashmina goats in Ladakh’s Changthang valley had starved to death during an extreme winter. These goats survive on the valley’s sparse, peculiar foliage. Climate change had tipped a fragile balance, and devastation followed.
“That moment pushed me to look at this situation much deeply,” he recalls. Afzal, then, joined a nomadic group in Kashmir and began moving mountain to mountain with a flock of 1,500 goats. For years, he lived as a goatherd—migrating with the seasons, learning about the lands, and absorbing a way of life honed over centuries.
That lived experience became the backbone of The Pashmina Goat Project, an initiative dedicated not only to preserving the authenticity of Pashmina fibre but also supporting shepherd communities, livelihoods, and the knowledge systems associated with pashmina.
Afzal’s response has been characteristically hybrid: part art, part activism, part technology. One strand is what he calls ‘Luxury Pashmina Art’—abstract works painted in translucent layers directly onto pashmina wool, often embroidered to add depth. The pieces take months, sometimes years, echoing the time-intensive craft traditions they honour. Proceeds fund herders, artisans and their families.
The Changpas, the nomadic herders of Changthang, are central to this story. “The community of Changpas who care for these goats have the key to a happy life,” Afzal says. “They don’t stay in the same place for long. If you stay in one place for too long, you will destroy the environment around.”
For generations, these communities relied on their understanding of the environment—when to move, where to graze, how to survive lethal winters. Climate change has scrambled that wisdom. Add to this the flood of fake pashmina—cheap mill-made imitations passed off as the real thing—which threaten their livelihoods.
Afzal has also built a blockchain-inspired repository that tracks pashmina from goat to garment, eliminating middlemen and ensuring herders and weavers are paid fairly.
Working across the entire chain—goatherds, spinners, dyers, weavers and finishers—Afzal has helped position authentic pashmina within the global sustainable luxury conversation. Artisan incomes have also risen by 35–40 percent since the project began in 2013. “I believe that everyone is linked—the birds, seeds, animals, and the humans who reap its benefits,” he says. “There is art, a love of community, but most of all compassion for nature’s numerous creatures.”