Ladakh’s primal occupants were migrant yak herders.The permanent establishments were settled forth the Indus by Buddhist pioneers making way from India to Mt Kailash in Tibet. Buddhism soon emerged as the ruling religion, though the minority Brokpa clan still pursues.
Around the 9th century, the Buddhist emperors of Ladakh had fortified a kingdom growing all the way from Kashmir to Tibet, guarded by forts and stippled with ample Buddhist gompas (monasteries). Various creeds strived for eminence, but the Gelukpa (Red Hat) form was popularized by the Tibetan settlers Tsongkhapa in the 14th century, and it soon assumed the form of the major philosophy in the valley.
Concurrently, Muslim armies commenced to trespass Ladakh from the west. In the 16th century, the territory fell shortly to Ali Mir of Baltistan, but Buddhism rebounded back beneath Singge Namgyal (1570–1642), who entrenched a new capital at Leh. Ladakh was completely adjoined into the kingdom of the Dogra Rajas of Jammu in 1846.
Since then, Ladakh has been administered as a sub-district of Jammu and Kashmir. In return for anti-Buddhist inequality, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) was assembled in 1996, urging for the establishment of a Union Territory of Ladakh. Since then, candidates from the Ladakh Union Territory Front have an advantage on the field at elections, but with the state government prospering tediously from Ladakh’stourism industry, self-determination is likely to remain a distant dream.
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Ladakh:
Leh:
Nubra Valley:
Pangong:
Tso Moriri:
Zanskar:
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