Leh

Leh grew where several caravan routes met: the roads from Kashmir, from Tibet and, over the Karakoram Pass, from Yarkand and Kashgar in Central Asia. Ladakh's early history was tied to the Tibetan empire, and Buddhism spread here from the ninth and tenth centuries, when a branch of the Tibetan royal line established a kingdom in the upper Indus. Monasteries such as Lamayuru and, a little later, Alchi belong to the centuries of renewed Buddhist building that followed.

The Namgyal dynasty, founded in the 15th century, made Leh its capital. Sengge Namgyal, who ruled in the early 17th century, built the nine-storey palace above the town and endowed monasteries including Hemis. Ladakh was drawn into the wars between Tibet and its neighbours later that century, and in the 1830s and 1840s Dogra forces from Jammu conquered the kingdom, which then passed with Jammu and Kashmir into the princely state ruled under British paramountcy. Through all of this Leh remained a trading town, where pashmina wool, salt, silk, tea and dried fruit changed hands in the bazaar.

Partition and the closing of the Tibetan and Central Asian frontiers in the mid-20th century ended that trade abruptly. Ladakh became strategically important instead: roads and an airstrip were built, and the region saw fighting during conflicts with Pakistan and a border war with China in 1962. Tourism was permitted from 1974 and grew into the mainstay of the local economy. Ladakh was separated from Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 and became a union territory administered directly from Delhi, with Leh as its principal town.

Ladakhi culture is Tibetan Buddhist in form and language across most of the Leh district, with a substantial Muslim community in the town itself and a Sunni and Shia majority further west around Kargil. Ladakhi, a Tibetic language, is spoken at home, with Urdu, Hindi and English also in use. Life turns around the gompas: villages support their local monastery, monks are drawn from local families, and the calendar is set by festivals of masked cham dance, in which monks represent protective deities in painted masks and heavy brocade.

Material culture is adapted to cold and scarcity. Houses are built of sun-dried brick with flat roofs stacked with winter fodder, the goncha, a heavy woollen robe, is still worn by older people, and women's perak headdresses set with turquoise are brought out for festivals. Pashmina from the Changthang plateau, woven woollens, apricot kernel oil and silver jewellery are the region's traditional products.

Archery and polo are the old competitive sports, both played in summer with music and beer, and modern Ladakhi pop and dance have a strong following. The Ladakh Buddhist Association and Islamic organisations both play a large part in public life, and relations between the communities, strained at times in the past, are a matter of careful local management. Environmental and political campaigns over water, glaciers, mining and demands for constitutional protection for Ladakh's land and jobs have become prominent in recent years.

About 30,000 people live in Leh, and roughly 130,000 in the Leh district as a whole — a very small population spread over a vast area. Tourism dominates the economy for four or five months of the year, employing drivers, guides, hotel staff and shopkeepers; the rest of the year runs on government employment, the army and paramilitary presence, small-scale farming of barley, wheat and vegetables, and apricot growing in the lower valleys.

The year divides sharply. From June to September the town is full, hotels are booked out and roads are busy with motorcycles and jeeps. From November the passes close, businesses shut, many families move to warmer parts of India or live off stores, and the town becomes quiet and very cold, with water pipes freezing and solar heating doing much of the work. Schools, hospitals and the airport keep working through it.

Water is the central problem. Leh depends on snowmelt and groundwater, and the growth of hotels has drawn heavily on both; glaciers are retreating, and artificial ice stupas built in winter to release meltwater in spring have become a well-known local response. Waste management, traffic in the short season and the loss of farmland to building are the other recurring concerns, along with the constitutional questions raised since Ladakh became a union territory.

Ladakhi food is built on barley, wheat, root vegetables, dairy and, for non-vegetarians, mutton — the produce of a short growing season at high altitude. Ngamphe, roasted barley flour also known as tsampa, is mixed with tea or water into a dough and eaten as a staple. Skyu, a thick stew of thumb-pressed wheat dough with vegetables and sometimes meat, and chutagi, a bow-tie pasta soup, are the winter dishes, cooked slowly on a stove that also heats the room.

Tibetan cooking is everywhere in the town: thukpa noodle soup, steamed and fried momos filled with vegetables or mutton, and tingmo steamed bread. Thin buckwheat pancakes, khambir, a dense local bread eaten at breakfast, and apricot jam appear on guesthouse tables, and apricots themselves — fresh in late summer, otherwise dried — are Ladakh's best-known crop, along with walnuts and seabuckthorn berries pressed for juice.

Drink is distinctive. Gur gur cha, the churned butter tea salted rather than sweetened, is served in homes and monasteries and takes some getting used to; chhang, a barley beer, is drunk at weddings and festivals. Restaurants along Changspa Road and the bazaar also serve north Indian, Chinese and Israeli dishes for the summer trade, and bakeries run by Kashmiri and Tibetan families sell bread and pastries through the season.