Ladakh is a land like no other. Bounded by two of the worlds' mightiest mountain ranges, the Great Himalayas and the Karakoram, it lies athwart to two others the Ladakh range and the Zanskar range. Today a high altitude desert ranging from about 9000 feet (2750m) at Kargil to 25,170 feet (7672m) at Saser Kangri in the Karakoram, sheltered from the rain -bearing clouds of the Indian monsoon by the barrier of the Himalayas, Ladakh was once covered by an extensive lake system, the vestiges of which still exist on its south-east plateaux of Rupshu and Chushul-in drainage basins with evocative names like Tso-moriri., Tsokar and the grandest of all, Pangong Tso. Occassionally, some stray monsoon clouds do find their way over the Himalayas to Ladakh.

For close on 900 years, from the middle of the 10th century, Ladakh was an independt kingdom, its dynasties coming from old Tibet. The kingdom was at the greatest political fortune in the early 17th century under the famous king Senge Namgyal, whose rule extended across the Spiti and wester Tibet upto Mayum La beyond the sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovara. Ladakh became best recognized as the trade route between the Punjab and Central Asia, for centuries being traversed by caravans carrying textiles and spices, raw silk and carpets, dyestuffs and narcotics. The famous pashm, better known as cashmere also came down from the high altitude plateaux of eastern Ladakh and western Tibet.