Pastoralism is an age-old livelihood system mainly practised in resource-poor regions such as arid, semi-arid, mountain, and cold desert areas. Pastoralism refers to the domestication of livestock for subsistence. It is practised on rangelands, which are communally owned, privatised, and agricultural fallow land. It is also a socioeconomic, cultural, and ecological form of life. Pastoralism as a livelihood activity has been coping with temporal and spatial variabilities. Pastoralists have developed resilience to cope with such variabilities and withstand livelihood shocks. Since pastoralism is being operated in regions like the mountains of the Himalayas, it has been exposed to various challenges. Current literature highlights that in recent two decades, this pastoral livelihood system has been changing due to various factors, such as land use-land change, climatic factors, geopolitical factors, economic factors, education factors, and motives for upward mobility, that have created challenges for the sustainability of pastoralism. Due to land accusations and regional and local regulations, traditional pasture lands are no longer readily available. Due to several challenges, the new generation of pastoral communities is no longer interested in continuing the pastoral traditional way of life; thus, it will affect the sustenance of the pastoral livelihood system. Those factors have led to various livelihood-associated vulnerabilities for pastoralists of the Indian Himalayan regions such as the Gaddis. This further leads to the migration of herders in the urbanised region in search of uncertain non-pastoral opportunities. The government has proactively taken various initiatives to build pastoralists’ resilience; however, this is not halting the present change. Therefore, this paper highlights factors affecting the sustainability of the pastoral livelihood system with special reference to the Gaddis from the Himalayas.