Hunza, Gilgit-Baltistan, visual storyteller Taseer Baig won the Public Choice Award for a photograph of Wakhi shepherdess Afroze Numa at an ICIMOD regional competition.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development organised the competition under the theme “Voices of the Highlands: Life, Land and Livestock in a Changing World.”
The winning image documents Afroze Numa, one of the last Wakhi shepherdesses of Shimshal Valley in Hunza, Pakistan. She has spent her life moving with flocks and yaks between Shimshal village and high pastures near Shimshal Pass.
The journey climbed to nearly 4,800 metres above sea level, and the photograph likely captured her final seasonal migration. Baig, a visual storyteller from Hunza and a member of the Pamir Times team, works across photography, video storytelling, and digital media. He focuses on remote mountain communities, indigenous cultures, and environmental challenges.
The competition stemmed from the United Nations General Assembly’s declaration of 2026 as the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. The initiative aims to raise awareness of pastoral communities and fragile mountain ecosystems
For decades, Wakhi women have supported local economies through seasonal pastoralism and dairy production. Climate change, economic pressures and social change are now threatening the tradition and the rangelands that sustain it.
