Central theme, the development of ladakh has taken the primal focus. As ladakh is one of the highest land having attitude climate forming major impossibilities for human oriented prosperity, so the strategic development in needed. Reorientation of development works need an in-depth research of this land. The present condition of ladakh is well documented.

The spread of Buddism and Tibetan secular power throughout the Himalayas led to a distinctive style of fortifications not found anywhere else. This book looks at Himalayan fortifications, from their creation in the Middle Ages to their destruction and capture by the Chinese in the 20th century.

The water was icy cold and my feet were getting numb so I had to come out of the chilled water leaving my motorcycle stranded.She was still standing upright with the heavy loads without a stand The repetitive calling of the mighty Himalayas was irresistible to Mukul and he set out, away from his mundane living, answering the call, testing his own endurance in exchange of witnessing the un-paralleled beauty of the Greater Himalayan Ranges and high mountain passes of the world . Facing extreme cold and witnessing unfathomed snow desert, he rode on, fulfilling a dream. From hotel rooms to sleeping in tents amidst nowhere, he was driven to live a life only imagined. The journey only proved to be but a learning lesson giving new meaning to his being and his surroundings. Riding through the dangerous Zoji La and the battle fields of Kargil he plunged into the wilderness of Suru Valley, crossing the vast snow desert to the most interior part of Ladakh, Zanskar. Taking head on the mighty Khardung La, he then rode across the beautiful sand dunes of Hunder towards the last village of the country, Turtuk, on Indo-Pak border located very close to Karakoram Range. Meandering through the mighty Chang La and riding on the bank of mystically beautiful Pangong Tso towards Chushul on Indo-China border. He then continued to ride on the bank of Indus River through the painted mountains and high altitude desert to the highest Observatory of Hanley. He tracked his route witnessing the nomadic life of Karzok and magical lake, Tso Moriri and towards the high altitude wild life zone of Tso Kar. Continuing to ride through the famous Moore Plains and the deadliest Baralacha La to the heavenly beautiful Suraj Tal before tracing his route back to Delhi.

William Moorcroft (1767-1825) was a veterinary surgeon who, after maintaining a veterinary practice for a time in London, was engaged in 1807 by the East India Company to manage its breeding of horses. He arrived in India in 1808 and took charge of the company's stud operations at Pusa, Bengal. In 1811 and 1812 he undertook journeys to the northwest in search of larger and better stud horses than he was able to find in India. In July 1812 he crossed the Himalayas to become one of the first Europeans to enter Tibet by this route. By this time, his interests had expanded from the procurement of horses to include the opening of trade relations between Central Asia and Great Britain and the projection of British influence beyond the northwest of British India to counter what he saw as a growing Russian presence in the region. In May 1819 Moorcroft received permission from the East India Company to travel to Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan). He reached the city in February 1825 after a more than five-year journey that took him to Ladakh, Kashmir, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, into Afghanistan via the Khyber Pass, and through Kabul and Kunduz to his ultimate destination. He began his return journey to India in July 1825, but died of fever in Balkh, Afghanistan, on August 27. Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Panjab is Moorcroft's account of his journey of 1819-25. It was posthumously edited and published by Horace Wilson, professor of Sanskrit at the University of Oxford and a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, based on Moorcroft's voluminous notebooks and correspondence. Volume one is devoted entirely to Moorcroft's journey to and residence in Ladakh. Volume two completes the account of Moorcroft's time in Ladakh and recounts his journey to Kashmir, Kabul, and Bukhara. The book contains a detailed map of Central Asia compiled and drawn by the London mapmaker John Arrowsmith, based mainly on the field notes of George Trebeck, a young Englishman who accompanied Moorcroft on the journey and who recorded geographical details measured in paces combined with compass bearings.

When John Crock of Bristol University began research in the Zangskar valley of Ladakh in 1977 his prime intention was to investigate the social anthropology of the area through studies of village life. In 1986 Crook returned to Ladakh with into the social organisation, history, meditational practices and philosophy of the yogins who still lived and practiced in the remote parts of the area. This book is a record of the author's adventurous journeys to meet some remarkable men. The yogins were often generous, providing accounts of their training, one of them allowing Crook to photograph a Mahamudra by the eminent Tipun Padma of this difficult work together with that of a biography of the great women yogin Machig Labdron provides the basis for extensive and original discussions of the meaning of Tibetan Buddhism and it's significance in our time.

"Set in the high-altitude Himalayan region of Ladakh, in northwest India, Caring for Glaciers looks at the causes and consequences of a transformation in people's relationship with the environment. It illuminates how relations of care and reciprocity-learned through everyday life and work in the mountains with the animals, glaciers, and deities that form Ladakh's sacred geography-shape and nurture an ethics of care for non-humans. The geopolitical context that has reconfigured Ladakh into a strategic border area in postcolonial India has transformed the fabric of everyday life. Simultaneously, the landscape of Ladakh is also being transformed by climate change. Ladakhi elders perceive this as a changing moral order, in which environmental depletion and social fragmentation are inextricably intertwined. As Glaciers Vanish contributes to the anthropology of ethics by examining the moral order that develops through the embodied experience of life and work in the Himalayas. While not divorced from Buddhist beliefs, this emerges not from religious doctrine but from beliefs and practices through which people engage with the environment. This book will be of interest to researchers in a variety of fields, including anthropology, geography, and sociology of religion. It will also appeal to scholars of Tibetan Buddhism and of borderland studies, to social scientists studying climate change, and to area studies specialists of India, South Asia, and the Himalayas"--

Art and Architecture in Ladakh shows how the region’s cultural development has been influenced by its location across the great communications routes linking India with Tibet and Central Asia. Edited by Erberto Lo Bue and John Bray, the collection contains 17 research papers by experienced international art historians and architectural conservationists, as well as emerging scholars from Ladakh itself. Their topics range widely over time, from prehistoric rock art to mediaeval Buddhist stupas and wall paintings, as well as early modern castle architecture, the inter-regional trade in silk brocades, and the challenges of 21st century conservation. Taken together, these studies complement each other to provide a detailed view of Ladakh’s varied cultural inheritance in the light of the latest research. Contributors include: Monisha Ahmed, Marjo Alafouzo, André Alexander, Chiara Bellini, Kristin Blancke, John Bray, Laurianne Bruneau, Andreas Catanese, Philip Denwood, Quentin Devers, Phuntsog Dorjay, Hubert Feiglstorfer, John Harrison, Neil and Kath Howard, Gerald Kozicz, Erberto Lo Bue, Filippo Lunardo, Kacho Mumtaz Ali Khan, Heinrich Poell, Tashi Ldawa Thsangspa and Martin Vernier.