About Leh
The
main town of the region, is dominated by Sengge Namgyal's nine-storey Palace,
a building in the grand tradition of Tibetan architecture, said to have inspired
the famous Potala in Lhasa, which was built half a century later. Above it,
on Namgyal Tsemo, the peak overlooking the town, are the ruins of the earliest
royal residence at Leh, a fort built by King Tashi Namgyal in the 16th century.
The associated temples remain intact, but they are kept locked except during
the morning and evening hours when a monk toils up the hills from Sankar Gompa
to attend to the butter-lamps in front of the images.
Down in the bazaar, the main sites to visit are the Jo-khang, a modern ecumenical
Buddhist temple, and the imposing mosque dating from the late 17th century almost
opposite. But the pleasures of Leh are not confined to the purposeful visiting
of sites. For locals and visitors alike, a stroll along the main bazaar, observing
the varied crowd and peering into the curio shops is an entrancing experience.
A particularly charming sight is the line of women from nearby villages sitting
along the edge of the footpath with baskets of fresh vegetables brought for
sale to town's people. Chang Gali, behind the main bazaar, is less bustling
but has intriguing little shops selling curious and jewelry; and further on
is the labyrinthine alleyways and piled-up houses of the old city, cluttering
around the foot of the palace hill.
In the other direction, down from the bazaar, are the stalls of the Tibetan
traders where you can bargain for pearls, turquoise, coral, malachite, lapis
lazuli and many other kinds of semi-precious stones and jewelry, as well as
curiously carved yak-horn boxes, quaint brass locks, china or metal bowls, or
any of a whole array of curious. When you're tired of strolling, you can step
into any of several restaurants, some of them in the open air- in gardens, or
on the sidewalk - which serve local, Tibetan, Indian and Continental cuisine.
Or you can strike off away from the bazaar, past Zangsti, the old coppersmith's
quarte, past the Moravian Church to the Ladakh Ecological Centre. From here
there is a footpath across the fields to Sankar Gompa- a half an hour walk.
Or you can leave the main road from the bazaar near the Moravian Church and
turn off to Changspa, an attractive village, and practically a suburb of Leh,
lying below the hill on which stands the modern Ladakh Shanti Stupa, accessible
by a winding road. Down past the Tourist Information Centre in the Dak-Bungalow
Complex, you can follow the Fort road to Skara, another pretty and prosperous
suburb of Leh town, and admire the earthen ramparts of Zorawar Singh's Fort,
now housing army barracks.
This road continues onward, swinging around the periphery of the village to
meet the main highway near a crossroads where the roads from Srinagar and Manali
meet. A side road taking off from here traverses the interior of Skara to meet
the main highway near the airport, an excellent drive through the heart of the
sprawling village.
Too far for a stroll, not far enough to be called a trek, there are several
attractive destinations within a 10-kms radius of Leh. Sabu, a charming village
with a small gompa, nestles between two southward-stretching spurs of the Ladakh
range about 9km away. In the same direction, but nearer town, is Choglamsar,
with the Tibetan refugee settlement including a child's village, a handicrafts
centre devoted largely to carpet-weaving, and the Dalai Lama's prayer-gournd,
Jiva-tsal. Some 8km on the Srinagar road is the turning for Spituk Gompa, and
village. On of the gompa's main features is the chapel dedicated to the Goddess
Tara, with twenty-three images of her various manifestations.
About Ladakh
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.
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 plateaux of Rupshu and Chushul - in drainage basins with
evocative names like Tso-moriri, Tsokar,a nd grandest of all, Pangong-tso. Occasionally,
some stray monsoon cluds 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. Dras, Zanskar and
the Suru Valley on the Himalaya's northern flank receive heavy snow in winter;
this feeds the glaciers whose meltwater, carried down by streams, irrigates
the fields in summer.
For the rest of the region, the snow on the peaks is virutally 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.
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. Thus summer temperatures
rarely exceed about 27 degree celcuis in the shade, while in winter they may
plummet to minus 20 degree celcuis even in Leh. Surprisingly, though, the thin
air makes the heat ofthe sun even more intense than at lower altitudes; it is
said that only in Ladakh can a man sitting in the sun with his feet in the shade
suffer from sunstroke and frostbite at the same time!
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