Born in the forest: the women giving birth alone in the Kashmiri mountains

Kashmiri herders near the 3,500-metre-high Pir Panjal pass. Each year, as the snow melts, up to a million Gujjar nomads migrate with their livestock for weeks or months. Photograph: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy

Dawn had just broken across the trail through the Pir Panjal mountains when Fatima Deader felt the first labour pains. She and her family had almost reached the midway point of their 134 mile (215km) trek from Rajouri in Jammu to Kashmir’s higher pastures. Mist clung to the forest, and the ground was slick beneath the feet of the caravan of about 70 pastoralists who had stopped to camp together the previous night.

A week from her due date, she had been travelling on horseback and assumed the discomfort she felt was fatigue – until pain tore through her body.