"The Sun Decides the Day, the Market Shapes the Plate": Changing Lives in Yuksam

Near Hungri Monastery, Kanchi sits in her kitchen, boiling a packet of instant noodles. Her children, home from school in the city, have brought several packets with them. She cooks the noodles, tastes a little while stirring, and quietly admits, "I cannot blame them. Those flavours are very good". After they return to school, she sometimes buys a few packets for herself from the local markets, even as she warns them, "These foods will upset your stomach".

This small moment captures something much larger happening in Yuksam, a historic village in West Sikkim located in the eastern Himalayas. Over the past two decades, the rhythms of daily life here have shifted quietly but unmistakably. A hotter sun has changed when people can work. New roads, tourism, and education have changed what families eat. Climate change, tourism, and migration may seem large and abstract, but in Yuksam, they directly affect everyday life, including farming (the fields) and what people eat (the dinner table).

When the Sun Ran the Day

Until about 10–15 years ago, life in Yuksam followed a steady, predictable pace. Villagers woke before sunrise, around 4:30 or 5 a.m., and walked to the fields together, carrying tools and a simple breakfast. Work continued through the morning with a short break around 8 a.m. The pleasant climate allowed farmers to stay out until 4 or 5 p.m. without much difficulty. Evenings were for cooking, eating together, and going to bed early, usually by 8:30 or 9 p.m. The day had a rhythm. It was shared, predictable, and tied closely to the land. Today, that rhythm has broken.

Farmers are preparing the field for cultivation by laying plastic mulch sheets over raised beds to conserve moisture, control weeds, and improve growing conditions for crops.

Rising temperatures have made afternoon work increasingly hard. By noon, the heat is intense and exhausting. Most farmers now head home by 11 or 12 pm. The workday has been split into two shorter stretches, early morning and late afternoon. After lunch around 2 pm, farmers rest indoors during the peak heat hours, then return to the fields around 4 pm and work until sunset. Routine tasks like weeding, ploughing, and harvesting now require frequent breaks to avoid dizziness, fatigue, and dehydration. As Thinley, a farmer for the past 20 years, puts it simply, “The sun decides our day now”.

This is not just a local experience. Research on occupational heat stress shows that high temperatures reduce physical performance and labour capacity. In regions across Africa and Asia, rising heat levels not only cut effective working hours but also raise labour costs; more workers or longer timelines are needed to complete the same tasks⁴. Studies from the United States link rising temperatures to real income losses during warmer months¹. In Yuksam, climate change is not arriving as a serious event. It is arriving as a slow reorganisation of time, shrinking the afternoon, breaking up the workday in agriculture, and quietly eroding the predictability that once defined everyday life.

From Barley to Branded Foods

The changes in Yuksam are not only about when people work. What ends up on the dining table has shifted just as much. Until the late 1990s, barley was at the centre of everyday food. It was used to make tsampa (roasted barley flour), thukpa (noodle soup), and chang (a fermented local drink). Meals were simple, seasonal, and grown close to home. Older people recall that people were leaner, more active, and rarely spoke of lifestyle-related health complaints. Growing and preparing food was hard work, and that work was woven into daily agricultural life.

Rice served with dal and locally grown small native potatoes from Yuksom, presented on a traditional brass plate.

The first major shift came with rice. Softer, more versatile, and preferred especially by children, rice gradually replaced barley as the main grain. Over time, barley disappeared from daily meals, kept for rituals and occasional use.

Then came the roads, and with them, the shops. Better road connectivity and growing tourism brought packaged and processed foods to Yuksam's small shops. Instant noodles, branded biscuits, potato chips, and soft drinks, once rare, are now routine purchases. Where villagers once bought from small local bakeries, they now choose from commercially produced brands at lower prices and in more flavours.

Yuksam's native potatoes

Tourism shaped the food landscape further. As tourist visitor numbers grew, local eateries adapted their menus. French fries, fried rice, and momos became standard. Even the type of potato grown in the village changed. The small, round, locally grown variety gave way to larger, commercial potatoes, which are easier to peel, cut, fry, and store. The local variety hasn't disappeared entirely, but people now grow it mainly for their own use, not for sale. Food has become a product tailored to visitors, while everyday meals increasingly rely on global supply chains.

This pattern is not unique to Yuksam. Studies from communities in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula show that as tourism expands, farming declines, and dependence on shop-bought food grows. Villages more connected to tourism tend to eat more processed, packaged food than farming communities with less outside contact². When global food products enter rural markets, they don't simply sit alongside traditional diets; they reorganise them. Local foods get turned into tourist attractions, valued for their novelty, while everyday eating quietly becomes more commercial and standardised².

The Taste Children Bring Home

Food habits in Yuksam are also changing because of where young people go to study outside the village. Yuksam has no colleges or higher educational institutions. After finishing school locally, most young people leave for towns and cities to continue their education. There, they eat from hostel kitchens, school canteens, and roadside stalls where rice, instant noodles, and packaged snacks are affordable, common, and normal.

When they come home for the holidays, they bring these tastes with them. Parents notice that children who have eaten rice and instant noodles in the city begin asking for the same at home. What starts as an occasional request gradually becomes a regular expectation, and over time, it reshapes what the family buys and cooks.

Kanchi, near Hungri Monastery, is a good example. She did not seek out instant noodles herself. They arrived in her kitchen through her children. She tasted them while cooking, found herself drawn to the intensity of flavour, something different from traditional meals, and quietly started buying packets for herself. She still warns her children about the health effects. But she has come to like them, too.

Instant noodles

This is how dietary change often works. Not through serious events, but through small, everyday moments. Young people studying away from home encounter new food cultures and carry those habits back when they return. In doing so, they become quiet agents of change within their own families. The absence of higher education in Yuksam has, in an unintended way, contributed to a shift in taste, one plate at a time.

A Generation Growing Up Differently

These changes raise real questions about health. Older people in Yuksam consistently contrast current eating habits with earlier times when food was more local, more physically labour-intensive to produce, and less processed. Younger people show clear preferences for instant noodles, packaged snacks, and soft drinks. Research from urban Karnataka, India, found a growing share of processed food consumption, with higher rates among younger generations; around 16% of participants showed signs of junk food dependence. Most cases were mild, but this problem was more common among Millennials and Generation Z³. Yuksam is not an urban centre, but the generational pattern is similar. Each generation grows up with a slightly different sense of what food is normal, what tastes good, and what a meal should look like.

Yuksam is not falling apart. It is adjusting, as communities always do. But the adjustments are real. The hotter sun has narrowed the working day. New foods have replaced old ones. Children leave, learn new habits, and bring them home. Tourism has changed what is grown, cooked, and sold. These are not abstract trends; they are felt in tired bodies resting through the afternoon heat, in kitchen shelves stocked with packets that did not exist here a generation ago, and in the quiet gap between what elders remember and what children now prefer.

The story of Yuksam shows how abstract concepts like climate change, globalisation, education, and tourism shape everyday life. The sun still rises over the Himalayas. Families still eat together. But what they eat, and when they work, and how long they can stay in the fields, all of that is shifting. Slowly, quietly, and for keeps.

References

1. Amini, M., IBRAHIMI, G. L., Rangkooy, H., & FOULADI, D. B. (2021). Climate change and its effects on farm workers.

2. Leatherman, T. L., Hoke, M. K., & Goodman, A. H. (2016). Local nutrition in global contexts: critical biocultural perspectives on the nutrition transition in Mexico. New Directions in Biocultural Anthropology, 49-65.

3. Masthi, N. R., & Jahan, A. (2020). Junk food addiction across generations in urban Karnataka, India. Journal of Communicable Diseases, 52(1), 65-71.

4. Orlov, A., Jägermeyr, J., Müller, C., Daloz, A. S., Zabel, F., Minoli, S., ... & Sillmann, J. (2024). Human heat stress could offset potential economic benefits of CO₂ fertilization in crop production under a high-emissions scenario. One Earth, 7(7), 1250-1265.

About the Author

Abhishek is a researcher with a background in Development Studies, focusing on circular economy and sustainability. Beyond research, he enjoys exploring local food cultures and believes that every place has a story best told through its cuisine.