Ladakh is a land like no other. Bounded by two of
the world's mightiest mountain ranges, the Great Himalaya and the
Karakoram, it lies athwart two other, the Ladakh range and the Zanskar
range. Ladakh lies at altitudes ranging from about 9,000 feet (2750m)
at Kargil to 25,170 feet (7,672m) at Saser Kangri in the Karakoram.
The traveller from India will look in vain for similarities between the land
and people he has left and those he encounters inLadakh. The faces and physique
of the Ladakhis, and the clothes they wear, are more akin to those of Tibet
and Central Asia than of India.
The original population may have been Dards, an Indo-Aryan race from down the
Indus. But immigration fromTibet, perhaps a millennium or so ago, largely overwhelmed
the culture of the Dards and obliterated their racial characteristics.
In eastern and central Ladakh, today's population seems to be mostly of Tibetan
origin. Further west, in and arond Kargil, there ismuch in the people's appearance
that suggests a mixed origin.
The exception to this generalizationis the Arghons, a community of Muslims in
Leh, the descendants of marriages between local women and Kashmiri or Central
Asian merchants.
Buddhism reached Tibet from India via Loadkah, and there are ancient Buddhist
rock engravings all over the ragion, even in areas like Dras and the lower Suru
Valley which today are inhabited by an exclusively Muslim population.
The divide between Muslim, and Buddhis Ladakh passes through Mulbekh (on the
Kargil-Leh road) and between the villages of Parkachick and Rangdum in the Suru
Valley, though there are pockets of Muslim population further east, in Padum
(Zanskar), in Nubra Valley and in and around Leh.
The approach to Buddhist village is invariable marked by mani walls which are
long chest-high structures faced with engraved stones bearing the mantrra im
mane padme hum and by chorten, commemorative cairns, like stone pepper-pots.
Many villagers are crowned with a gompa or monastery which may be anything from
an imposing complex of temples, prayer halls and monks dwellings, to a tiny
hermitage housing a single image and home to solitary lama.
