Acknowledgements
I would like to thank first of all Charles Ramble, for his patience, editorial guidance and suggestions.
Also, without the welcome of the Zanskarpa and especially Zubida, Iq-bal, Meme Abdul Aziz, Fatima, Shamas, and Bashir as well as Sonam, Jigmet, Dorjey, Tashi, among others, I would not have been able to spend so much time in Zanskar Valley.
Thanks are also due to my grandmothers, who introduced me to what it means to be and live as a upstanding woman, assuming her own life choices; to Pierre Bonte who welcomed me to Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Jean-Claude Galey who supervised my PhD first and since then has become a precious friend.