Four young women in Hanle, a remote village in India's Ladakh region at 4,500 metres above sea level, have been trained as astronomy guides to show tourists the night sky. Since becoming India's first Dark Sky Reserve in 2022, Hanle has experienced a tourism boom, with visitor numbers surging from around 3,000 annually to nearly 30,000 in 2024-25, creating new economic opportunities for local communities. These women now work as "astro-ambassadors," guiding visitors through telescopes, laser-pointer constellation tours and midnight Milky Way photography sessions whilst maintaining their day jobs at family-run homestays.

Palzes Angmo, Tsering Dolker, Tsering Yangdol and Padma Chamchot, all in their late twenties, were among 24 young people trained by the Ladakh administration and Indian Institute of Astrophysics over 15 days in 2022, learning to identify celestial objects, operate telescopes and photograph stars. Their evening work begins around 9pm, with the entire village switching off its lights at 11pm to provide optimal viewing conditions. Hanle's exceptional astronomical qualities—its dry air, high altitude, lack of light pollution and approximately 260 clear nights per year—make it one of the world's premier observation sites and home to the Indian Astronomical Observatory.