(A view of old Leh town from Leh Palace)
Been a while since I posted here. I spent the last ten days in Leh and that part of Ladakh. Over the next few weeks I'll write a bit about my trip.
When I mentioned to friends and family about the trip, some common questions were: "Going to Leh? What about Ladakh?", "Leh? Then you can see Ladakh also." If I said I was going to Ladakh, then the response would vary on predictable lines: "Ladakh? What about Leh?" You get the drift.
So, let's try and clear the air about Leh's relation to Ladakh. Till a few days ago, I thought Ladakh was the district and Leh was its headquarters. Turned out my understanding was correct, but not after 1979.
This gap in knowledge is easily explained. I read voraciously about Leh and Ladakh till the age of five and then moved on to other states and UTs of India that is Bharat.
If you're bored with this post, go ahead, take a break and work out my age as of 2012.
Ladakh was indeed a district till 1979. In that year, it was redrawn as two districts: Leh and Kargil, and Ladakh ceased to have an independent administrative identity (like a district or taluka). Wiki told me in hushed whispers that Leh is in fact the second largest district in the whole of India after Kutch, Gujarat.
So how do we understand Ladakh today? Perhaps as a region comprising of the districts of Leh and Kargil. However, that is a narrow way of looking at it. A wider view would be to see Ladakh as the sum total of the geography, ethnicity, culture, and religion of Leh, Kargil, Zanskar and the Nubra Valley (all of them in J&K) and Lahaul and Spiti ('Lahool-iSpiti as it is pronounced locally) (in Himachal Pradesh).
To make the picture really complete, Ladakh would have to include Gilgit - Baltistan in Pakistan and the Aksai Chin area under Chinese control.
More Leh-ter.
