Leh sits at 3,524 metres and gets barely 35 millimetres of rain
High on the Indus in Ladakh, Leh was once a caravan stop where salt, cashmere wool, silk yarn and brocade changed hands between Tibet, Kashmir, India and China. Its 17th-century royal palace invites comparison with Lhasa's Potala, and its cold desert climate allows farmers just one barley harvest a year.
Leh is the largest city in Ladakh, part of the disputed Kashmir region and administered by India, and has served as Ladakh's capital since medieval times. Its name probably began as sLes, a word for a nomads' encampment, from Tibetan herders who grazed the valley once Dard settlers started irrigating it. The oldest ruins, on a hilltop above town, are still known as the Dard castle.
Little is recorded before the late 10th century, when the Tibetan prince Kyide Nyimagon, grandson of the anti-Buddhist king Langdarma, founded the kingdom with an army said to have started at just 300 men. He commissioned the main sculptures at Shey, 15 kilometres east, the old royal seat. Centuries later, in the reign of Delegs Namgyal, the Mughal governor of Kashmir helped repel a Mongol army and in return demanded, among other things, a large Sunni mosque below Leh Palace. Blending Muslim and Tibetan design, it holds more than 500 worshippers. German Moravian missionaries opened a mission in 1885 and stayed until 1947, running schools and clinics but winning few converts.
The 2011 census counted 30,870 residents, 70 percent of them male because of transient workers, traders and officials. Buddhists make up over 43 percent, followed by Hindus at 35 percent and Muslims at 15. Most people are Ladakhi and speak a Tibetic language.
Altitude shapes everything. Two seasonal highways, from Srinagar and Manali, each run over 420 kilometres and close under winter snow, though valley roads usually stay open. Winters run from late November to early March, and annual rainfall averages only 34.8 millimetres; even so, flash floods in 2010 killed more than 100 people. Since records began in 1951, average temperatures have risen by 4.0 degrees Celsius. The staple crop is naked barley, ground into tsampa, alongside apricots, walnuts and apples. While Leh sows in late May, fields at lower Khalatse are already half grown and yield two harvests.
Source: Leh
