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.
For close on 900 years from the middle of the 10th century, Ladakh was an independent
kingdom , its dynasties descending from the king of old Tibet.
Its political fortunes ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and the kingdom,
was at its greatest in the early 17th century under the famous king Sengge Namgyal,
whose rule extended across Spiti and western Tibet up to the Mayumla beyond
the sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Lake Mansarovar.
And gradually, perhaps partly due to the fact that it was politically stable,
in contrast to the lawless tribes further west, Ladakh became recognized as
the best trade route between the Punjab and Central Asia. For centuries it was
travered by caravans carrying textiles and spices, raw silk and carpets, dyestuffs
and narcotics.
Heedless of the land's rugged terrain and apparent remoteness, merchants entrusted
their goods to relays o fpony transporters who took about two months to carry
them from Amritsar to the Central Asian towns of Yarkand and Knotan. On this
long route, Leh was the half-way house, and developed into a bustling entreport,
it bazaars thronged with merchants from far countries.
The famous pashm (better known as cashmere) also came down from the high-altitude
plateaux of eastern Ladakh and western Tibet where it was produced, thorough
Leh to Srinagar, where skilled artisans transformed it from a matted oily mass
of goat's underfleece into shawls known the world over for their softness and
warmth. 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.
They followed a decade of war and turmoul, 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 & Kashmir.
Just over a century later, this union was disturbed by the partition of India,
Baltistan becoming part of Pakistan, while Ladakh remained in India as part
of the State of Jammu & Kashmir.
Ladakh Historical Background, Discover Ladakh Reservation
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