Story of Palzom Deckey; A Handicraft shop owner in Tabo,
Spiti Valley (the trans-Himalayan region) in Himachal Pradesh
"I first came to visit Tabo in 1989 and saw how remote and otherworldly it was, I was so mesmerized
- shortly after that I left."
I came back again in 2007, during the time my father-in-law used to run this shop, and shortly after that, I and my husband used to handle this handicraft shop. When we started, there was no connectivity to this remote town, and we didn’t really have a proper shop.
- From one of the first shop owners in a remote Himalayan region where only offbeat travellers dared to visit.
We used to have a tent cloth (tarpaulin) which we used as a roof over our head for the shop, after a long while when we both had a hard time convincing our landlord that we were facing many issues as we had to wrap up everything by 5 pm in the evening, we needed a proper structure and dimensions for our shop, and after continuous efforts, we built this shop that you’re seeing today. And this was all back in the year 2009!
It took us 3-4 hours every single day to set up our shop, back then it used to be on a woven cot. The types of items we sold were antique pieces and handicrafts from Nepal, Tibet, and regional India. When we started in Tabo, it was extremely remote than it is today. The streets were empty, they were not even built. There was no connectivity and the only shop that existed was mine alone. There was the Tabo Monastery and its guest house. During that time, his Holiness Dalai Lama initiated Kala-Chakra and I met him for his teaching. Majorly foreign tourists visited for ‘off-beat travel’ in those days. There were no apple orchards, homestays, or any vegetation. Life was different and serene back then, my business boomed and has boomed since then, though after the pandemic hit it has been difficult to sustain the business, as I run a shop here in Tabo during the summers and in Goa in the winter season. (the harsh winters in the Spiti Valley go upto - 30 degrees)
A self-made woman in business, a daughter, a mother, and a grandmother, and
our very own sweet and loving aunty, Deckey Palzom.
