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Updated: May 28, 2025
At some little distance outside Leh are the cremation grounds desert places, destitute of any other vegetation than the Caprifolia horrida. Each family has its furnace kept in good repair. The place is doleful, and a funeral scene on the only sunless day I experienced in Ladak was indescribably dismal.
In order to gain some intelligence of our whereabouts, I was obliged to give chase to this only inhabitant, and from her I discovered, that to reach Ladak a green-looking speck which she pointed out in the far distance we had to cross the desert sands, and still hold on our course for several miles.
Its source is in the region north of the Himalaya range, about lat. 31°, long. 82° 30'. It begins by flowing to the north-west, in a direction parallel to that of the Western Himalayas, along the northern flank of which it continues in this line a distance of about 700 miles, past Ladak, to long. 75° nearly.
This pass is on the road from these provinces to Ladâk and China, and I visited, on the other side of it, a new bridge over the Chandra, which will be a great convenience to traders.
The men generally seem feeble, with bent backs, and do not live to old age. During my travels in Ladak, I only encountered one man so old that his hair was white. From Karghil to the centre of Ladak, the road had a more cheerful aspect than that I had traversed before reaching Karghil, its prospect being brightened by a number of little hamlets, but trees and verdure were, unfortunately, rare.
Some lamas affirmed to me that they did not despair of one day bringing them back to the faith of their ancestors. From the religious point of view Ladak is a dependency of Lhassa, the capital of Thibet and the place of residence of the Dalai-Lama. In Lhassa are located the principal Khoutoukhtes, or Supreme Lamas, and the Chogzots, or administrators.
After about four kos, the sun began again to assert his supremacy, and, in conjunction with the cold of the morning, rather took liberties with our faces and hands. About half-way we came upon the merry ring of axes among the trees, and found a party of natives constructing a log-house for the benefit of travellers towards Ladak.
To all this, add a close-shaven head with only a little bristling fringe of hair, and you will have the general type, not alone of Ladak, but of entire Thibet. The women are also of small stature, and have exceedingly prominent cheek bones, but seem to be of much more robust constitution. A healthy red tinges their cheeks and sympathetic smiles linger upon their lips.
It contains an open bazaar street, and a mound above the town is crowned by the old royal castle. Leh, as well as the whole of the district of Ladak, is subject to the Maharaja of Kashmir, but the people are mostly of Tibetan race and their religion is Lamaism. We are now on the high road between India and Eastern Turkestan, the most elevated caravan route in the world.
And so past fascinating monastic buildings, through crystal torrents rushing over red rock, through flaming ravines, on rock ledges by scaffolded paths, camping in the afternoons near friendly villages on oases of irrigated alluvium, and down the Wanla water by the steepest and narrowest cleft ever used for traffic, I reached the Indus, crossed it by a wooden bridge where its broad, fierce current is narrowed by rocks to a width of sixty-five feet, and entered Ladak proper.
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