Skimp and save, if you must, if this winter you are headed to India. It's time to indulge yourself in one of the great pleasures of draping yourself in Kashmir’s most luxurious, high-value and prestigious shawls. 

Down the centuries Kashmir has been the world’s most enduring production centres for the most exquisite pashmina shawls, the raw material for which is the soft hair/wool (Persian: Pashm) of the Trans-Himalayan goat (Capra hircus) which roams in the wilds of the Changthang region bordering Ladakh in India and the Tibetan Plateau. What makes these cashmere shawls such a treasure is that the production of each beautiful, hand-woven piece is a painstaking affair. And, that this ancient craft had fallen into the doldrums, thanks to the less time-consuming machine-made spin-offs flooding the market.

The long-haul process of handwoven and embroidered Kashmiri pashmina shawls begins from the time the wool is collected by nomadic Ladakhi Changpa herders at the onset of summer, then it is cleaned, the yarn is spun and then woven— all manually. The time taken to produce even a single piece can take anything from several months to even years together depending on the kind of shawl one chooses to possess.