Ladakh Range Favorite Tips by zumodemango Top 5 Page for this destination

Visiting Ladakh is the most...

Favorite thing: Visiting Ladakh is the most wonderful thing I've ever done in my whole life!
Although this place is in India(Jammu & Cachemira), it is usually called'Little Tibet' because it is not only geographically close to Tibet: cultural and religion, too.
I recommend you some books to enjoy Ladakh:
-A journey in Ladakh by Andrew Harvey.
-LADAKH Crossroads of high Asia by Janet Rizvi.
-An inside into Ladakh by Nawand Tsering Shakspo.
-Ancient Futures, Learning from Ladakh by Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Fondest memory: I miss everything what I saw and heard and felt there. I miss the silence in the mornigs, the starts at nigths, people I met, mountains, flowers... everything. When I was on the plane I was so happy to see the range, all those huge red and snow mountains but I could never imagine what i was going to discover. A wonderful land full of colour and happiness, light and beautiness. Everything is my best memory!

little bit of Ladakh history

Favorite thing: For close on 900 years, from the middle of the 10th century, Ladakh was an independent kingdom, its dinasties descending from the kings of old tibet. Its political fortunes ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and the kingdom, was at its greatest in thte early 17th century under the famous king Sengge Namgyal, whose rule extended across Spiti and wenster Tibet up to the Mayumla beyond the sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar. Ladakh became recognized as the best trade route between the Punjab and Central Asia. For centuries it was traversed by caravans carrying textiles and spices, raw silk and carpets. The famous pashm(better known as cashmere) also came down from the high altitude plateaux of easter Ladakh and wenster Tibet where it was produced, through Leh to Srinagar, where skilled artisans transformed .

Fondest memory: Ironically, it was this lucrative trade, that finally spelt the doom of the independent kingdom. It attracted the covetous gaze of Gulab Singh, the ruler of Jammu in the early 19th century , and in 1834, he sent his general Zorawar Singh to invade Ladakh. There followed a decede of war and turmoil, which ended with the emergence of the British as the paramount power in north India. Ladakh, together with the neighbouring province of Baltistan, was incorporated into the newly created State of Jammu and Kashmir. Just over a century later, this union was disturbed by the partition of India, Baltistan became part of Pakistan while Ladakh remained in India as part of the State of Jammu & kashmir.

all this and more in: www.culturalindia.net/ladakh

Apart from visiting Temples,...

Favorite thing: Apart from visiting Temples, Gompas, Palaces, you must do a trekking. Walk trought these hight passes, these mountains is more than expirience, it is life itself. (view from Konmaru La)