Leh: At The Crossroads
Leh is the capital of Ladakh, located at 3500 meters height. It’s a small town by modern standards (ca. 44,000), but historically significant as a hub on the trade routes between Tibet, Central Asia and India. Today Leh also houses a large minority of Hindus due to migration, as well as a thriving community of Tibetan refugees. Historically however Leh is a Buddhist town with a longstanding minority of Shia Muslims.
Our drive from Kargil to Leh brought us to some interesting sights at quite high altitudes. Some of these pictures also illustrate how rocky and unique the landscape in the Ladakh area is compared to the rest of India.
Interestingly we also saw several posters of this Shia imam posing together with Ayatollah Khomeini. Our driver informed us that this was natural as the local Muslims were mostly Shias, and had connections to the Iranian shia community.
Our driver dropped us off in Leh near this roundabout pictured above. With an entrance to a building all lit up by neon lights on the right side of the road.
Here I’m standing in Leh Main Market. You can see I have put on some warmer clothes as the temperatures had dropped quite a bit compared to when we were in Kargil.
The Buddhist history of Leh is easily visible in its architecture. The colourful pieces of mantra texts hanging off of ropes and flying in the wind, can be seen all around. Leh also houses several impressive Buddhist temples, large buddhist bells (or wooden rollers that make a bell-like sound when you roll them) and a great Stupa.
Leh palace is also a quite impressive structure, here you can see how it sits on top of a tall hill, looking down upon the central city area. The next day we hiked up to the palace, and the views did not disappoint.
We also went to visit the Central Asian Cultural Museum, which I have to recommend. It was a well maintained and very informative museum, with a great variety of cultural objects and a good introduction to Leh’s history as a place connecting trade routes and facilitating cultural exchange.
This beautiful mosque next to the museum also helps show how multicultural Leh is.
That evening we did something Boye and I hadn’t done in a long while. We went to a local bar in Leh. Stereotypically enough the bar was out of beer and had almost nothing to serve, except several different types of Whiskey. Indians love their whiskey.
We met several interesting people and the evening went down as a memorable one. We took this picture outside with some of the Indian tourists we befriended in the bar.
Leh had been a great experience, from the incredible landscape, its architecture and scenery and also its lovely people, of which we befriended several.
But I was already looking East, and as you can see from the mountain tops in the picture above. We were headed to even greater heights (literally). Cheers, and see you next time as we head to the majestic Pangong lake on the border to Tibet.