[The Guardian] ‘My heart beats up here’: Greece’s nomadic herders on life in the hills – a photo essay

‘My heart beats up here’: Greece’s nomadic herders on life in the hills – a photo essay

For hundreds of years the Vlach herders in Greece and the Balkans have moved livestock to high mountain pastures for the summer months. But their numbers are dwindling as their arduous existence is threatened by soaring costs and a lack of state support

• Photographs by Vasilis Tsiolis

Every spring in the Thessalian plains of central Greece, in the shadow of the mountains, an ancient and sacred migration of humans and goats takes place.

The brothers Kostas and Efthymios Papastavros, along with Kostas’s wife Fotini, herd their 800 goats up on foot to the Koziakas mountain from their winter pastures in the plains; a journey of around 30 miles which takes them two days.

The family are descended from the Vlachs, nomadic herders and breeders who have existed in the Greek and Balkan region for hundreds of years and practise transhumance – the act of seasonally moving livestock from one pasture to another.

Kostas leading the goats back to the family’s makeshift summer barn on Koziakas mountain

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Source: ‘My heart beats up here’: Greece’s nomadic herders on life in the hills – a photo essay

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