LADAKH AND BALTISTAN, a province of Kashmir, India. The name Ladak, commonly but less correctly spelt Ladakh, and sometimes Ladag, belongs primarily to the broad valley of the upper Indus in West Tibet, but includes several surrounding districts in political connection with it; the present limits are between 4o' and 80° 3o' E., and between 32° 25' and 36° N.
It is bounded north by the Kuenlun range and the slopes of the Karakoram, north-west and west by the dependency of Baltistan or Little Tibet, south-west by Kashmir proper, south by British Himalayan territory, and east by the Tibetan provinces of Ngari and Rudok. The whole region lies very high, the valleys of Rupshu in the south-east being 15,000 ft., and the Indus near Leh II ,000 ft., while the average height of the surrounding ranges is 19,000 ft. The proportion of arable and even possible pasture land to barren rock and gravel is very small. Pop., including Baltistan (1931), 192,138, of whom 38,212 in Ladakh proper are Buddhists, whereas the Baltis have adopted the Shiah form of Islam.
The natural features of the country may be best explained by reference to two native terms, under one or other of which every part is included, viz., changtang, i.e., "northern, or high plain," where the amount of level ground is considerable, and rong, i.e., "deep valley," where the contrary condition prevails. The former predominates in the east, diminishing gradually westwards. There, although the vast alluvial deposits which once filled the valley to a remarkably uniform height of about 15,000 ft. have left their traces on the mountain sides, they have undergone immense de nudation, and their debris now forms secondary deposits, flat bottoms or shelving slopes, the only spots available for cultivation or pasture. These masses of alluvium are often either metamor phosed to a subcrystalline rock still showing the composition of the strata, or simply consolidated by lime.
A central range divides the Indus valley, here 4 to 8 m. wide, from that of its north branch the Shyok, which with its fertile tributary valley of Nubra is again bounded on the north by the Karakoram. This central ridge is mostly syenitic gneiss, and north-east from it are found, successively, Silurian slates, Car boniferous shales and Triassic limestones, the gneiss recurring at the Turkestan frontier. The Indus lies along the line which sepa
rates the crystalline rocks from the Eocene sandstones and shales of the lower range of hills on the left bank, the lofty mountains behind them consisting of parallel bands of rocks from Silurian to Cretaceous.
Several lakes in the east districts at about 14,000 ft. have been of much greater extent, and connected with the river systems of the country, but they are now mostly without outlet, saline and in process of desiccation.
Leh (q.v.) is the capital of Ladakh, and the road to Leh from Srinagar lies up the lovely Sind valley to the sources of the river at the Zoji La Pass (11,300 ft.) in the Zaskar range. This is the range which, skirting the southern edge of the upland plains of Deosai in Baltistan, divides them from the valley of Kashmir, and then continues to Nanga Parbat (26,620 ft.) and beyond that mountain stretches to the north of Swat and Bajour. To the south east it is an unbroken chain till it merges into the line of snowy peaks seen from Simla and the plains of India—the range which reaches past Chini to the famous peaks of Gangotri, Nandadevi and Nampa. It is the most central and conspicuous range in the Himalaya. The Zoji La, which curves from the head of the Sind valley on to the bleak uplands of Dras (where lies the road to the trough of the Indus and Leh), is, in spite of its altitude, a pass on which little snow lies. From the Zoji La the road continues by easy gradients, following the line of the Dras drainage, to the Indus, when it turns up the valley to Leh. From Leh there are many routes into Tibet, the best known being that from the Indus valley to the Tibetan plateau, by the Chang La, to Lake Pang kong and Rudok (14,00o f t.). Rudok occupies a forward position on the western Tibetan border analogous to that of Leh in Kash mir. The chief trade route to Lhasa from Leh, however, follows the line offered by the valleys of the Indus and the Brahmaputra (or Tsanpo), crossing the divide between these rivers north of Lake Manasarowar.