Ladakh is many things. An ancient mountain kingdom in a far corner of the Himalayas, it has long served as a crossroads and entrepot between the cultures of India, China, and Central Asia. This is a place where traditional Tibetan culture continues to flourish. Where the Chang Pa, the nomadic herders of the high plateaus, sustain a way of existing on the land that goes back thousands of years. Ladakh is a place where sand dunes soar unexpectedly amongst the world’s greatest mountains; where dazzling turquoise lakes are worshipped on isolated, windswept plains; where one may still be invited to meditate with a reclusive monk in a cliffside shrine. There is a deep well of history here. In the 1970s, when the region was finally opened up to western travelers, it became a magnet for all variety of academic research. Ladakh came to represent a model of a localized, sustainable society, and a culture that had maintained a living connection to the traditions of the past. Ladakh today is a land in transition and undergoing a rapid and tumultuous awakening to the modern world. One still feels grounded in a rich and meaningful history here, but there is also a sense of time catching up—and a gust in the winds of change.
