About Ladakh

Its landscapes are forbidding by any measure. Snow-swathed mountains rise to several thousand feet above one of the most elevated plateaus on earth. A treeless wind-swept country, much of Ladakh can be termed as mountainous, Arctic desert, where everything is parched by the rarefied dryness of the atmosphere. Scattered here and there, a few narrow fertile valleys provide a clear sparkling air. The limpidity of the atmosphere, in fact, gives the night sky a unique clarity, so full and bright with stars that one feels transported to some ethereal setting, far removed from Earth.

 Ladakh means ‘the land of high passes’ and is situated in the Northern most part of India. Ladakh has often changed names, all of which give a good description of the conditions prevailing in the region; Lad wags-land below the mountain passes; Maryul the red country; Nuah Ris bSkor Gsum; land to the west of Tibet.  In the West it is sometimes referred to as ‘Moon country‘, ‘the land of endless discoveries’,  ‘The Last Shangri-La’, ‘Moonscape’, ‘the broken moon land’ and ‘Little Tibet’, Rather a long list of names for an area of 97,000 square kilometres having one of the lowest population densities in the world (2 inhabitants per kilometre) 97,000 square kilometres of rocky desert, apparently inhospitable mountains, a world  of bewitching silence, framed in a parallel fashion by two of the most imposing ranges, the Karakoram to the north and  the Himalaya to the South.  If you fly from Srinagar, Delhi or even Jammu, you discern, hidden in the bewildering corridor of immensity, some green patches, some clusters of life.  They seem to have been placed near young and powerful rivers, the Shyok, Siachen, Zanskar and Indus to contrast harmoniously with the austere magnificence of he Ladakhi landscapes. The stark and rugged landscape is situated amidst multiple-hued mountains, some smooth enough to rub your cheeks on, others scraggly as though termites have had a go at them for breakfast. Miles and stretches of this never-never land, surprised by quaint little vibrant green hamlets oozing wild roses and lavender, fringe the life-giving Indus River. In geological terms, this is a young land, formed only a few million years ago by the buckling and folding of the earth's crust as the Indian sub-continent pushed with irresistible force against the immovable mass of Asia. Its basic contours, uplifted by these unimaginable tectonic movements, have been modified over the millennia by the opposite process of erosion, sculpted into the form we see today by wind and water. Yes, water! Today, a high -altitude desert, sheltered from the rain-bearing clouds of the Indian monsoon by the barrier of the Great Himalaya, Ladakh was once covered by an extensive lake system, the vestiges of which still exist on its south -east plateaus of Rupshu and Chushul - in drainage basins with evocative names like Tsomoriri, Tsokar and grandest of all, Pangong Tso. Occasionally, some stray monsoon clouds do find their way over the Himalaya, and lately this seems to be happening with increasing frequency. But the main source of water remains the winter snowfall. Drass, Zanskar and the Suru Valley on the Himalaya's northern flank receive heavy snow in winter; this feeds the glaciers whose melt water, carried down by streams, irrigates the fields in summer. For the rest of the region, the snow on the peaks is virtually the only source of water. As the crops grow, the villagers pray not for rain, but for sun to melt the glaciers and liberate their water. Usually their prayers are answered, for the skies are clear and the sun shines for over 300 days in the year.