Overview

Tucked away in a high remote corner of the Western Himalayas, wedged between Tibet and Central Asia, is the evocatively named district of Ladakh–Land of (high) Passes. Bounded by two of the world’s mightiest mountain ranges, the Karakoram in the north and the Great Himalaya in the south, it is traversed by two other parallel chains, the Ladakh Range and the Zanskar Range.

There’s a cheerful bustling atmosphere about the place, a surprising range of goods many of which are suitably exotic and that immediately apparent ethnic mix of people and costumes that you would expect of a trading town perched at 11000 feet at the cusp of High Asia.

Ladakh is a Buddhist country with prayer flags fluttering brightly in the wind and long ‘Mani walls’ covered in exquisitely carved prayer stones, stupas and chortens and large and small Buddhist monasteries called gompas, to be found everywhere. Indeed, one of the most attractive aspects of this region is the contrast between the stone-hard people and the gentle and cheerful Buddhism that they practice.

Every turn of the road, every twist of a walking trail opens exhilarating vistas of mountain and valley; of fissured crags choked with wild rose and crystal streams lined with willows. And it is hugely varied – with the plains of the Changthang supporting the herds of wild ass, antelope and even wild yaks with wolves and snow leopards to the Tso Kar and Tso Moriri to the high altitude passes such as Khardung la and Taglang La.

This habitat of this small country supports a commensurate diversity of birds and mammals. In an increasingly nondescript and undifferentiated globe, Ladakh remains a fragment of a world where every region was once unique and distinctive.