The Sowers of Joy

As she travels alone across Asia, the path of a young French woman of 30 years old crosses by chance with that of a singular religious community, tiny and composed exclusively of women. These women live in Puntsokling: one of the ten Buddhist nunneries totally deprived of resources in Zanskar, a valley on the edge of the Himalayas, in the northwest of India, st ill isolated from the rest of the country by its inhosp itable geography. This encounter at the end of the world will change the course of her life and, without a doubt, that of the nuns. A revelation and a long journey, both huMayn and sp iritual. Through the st ory that Caroline Riegel tells us, we discover both the charm of a unique «tribe» with an ast onishing sist erhood (a journey into the intimate) and the mast erly beauty of their territory (a journey into the landscape).In this book, the photographer delivers a luminous tribute, in images and in words, to these women who share, in the heart of the mountains of Zanskar, far from the modern world, their balance of life. In the face of dest itution: joy. In the face of solitude: solidarity. In the face of autarky: authenticity. In the same way that Matthieu Ricard - the book’s preface - speaks of wonder at the world, the «Sowers of Joy» offer a singular look at what surrounds them, at the meaning of exist ence. A rare travelogue where photography magnifi es the protagonists of an extraordinary st ory as much as their environment.

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