Ladakh is a land like no other. Bounded by two of the world's mightiest mountain ranges,
the Great Himalaya and the Karakoram, it lies athwart two others, the Ladakh range and the
Zanskar range.
In geological terms, this is a young land, formed only a few million years ago by the buckling
and folding of the earth's crust as the Indian sub-continent pushed with irresistible force against the immovable mass of Asia. Its basic contours, uplifted by these unimaginable tectonic movements, have been modified over the millennia by the opposite process of erosion, sculpted into the form we see today by wind and water.
Yes, water! Today, a high-altitude desert, sheltered from the rain-bearing clouds of the Indian monsoon by the barrier of the Great Himalaya,
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, Tso-kar, and grandest of all, Pangong-tso. Occasionally, some stray monsoon clouds do find their way over the Himalaya, and lately this seems to be happening with increasing frequency. But the main source of water
remains the winter snowfall. Dras, Zanskar and the Suru Valley on the Himalaya's northern flank receive heavy snow in winter; this feeds the glaciers whose meltwater, carried down by streams, irrigates the fields in summer.
Ladakh lies at altitudes ranging from about 9,000
feet (2,750 m) at Kargil to 25,170 feet (7,672 m) at Saser Kangri in the Karakoram. Thus summer temperatures rarely exceed about 27°C in the shade, while in winter
they may plummet to minus 20°C even in Leh. Surprisingly, though, the thin air makes the heat of the sun even more intense than at lower altitudes; it is said that only in Ladakh can a man sitting in the sun with his feet in the shade suffer from sunstroke and frostbite at the same time!
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Palace
Hotels- Lake Palace, Rambagh....