Ladakh

Ladakh is a Union Territory in the high Himalaya, separated from Jammu and Kashmir in October 2019. Its administrative centre is Leh, with Kargil as the second district. The territory covers a vast high-altitude area — much of it above 3,000 m — between the Karakoram range to the north and the Great Himalaya to the south.

It is a cold desert: rainfall is minimal, the air is thin, and habitability depends on snowmelt streams rather than rain. The population is small and concentrated in the Indus and Nubra valleys and the Changthang plateau. Livelihoods rest on barley, peas, apricots, pashmina from the Changthang goat, and — increasingly — tourism, which has grown sharply since the territory was opened up. Solar potential is very large and largely untapped.

Ladakh’s border with China runs along the Line of Actual Control and has been the site of repeated confrontation, most seriously in the Galwan valley in 2020. The Pangong Tso lake straddles the line. Since 2019 the territory has been administered directly by the Centre through a Lieutenant Governor with no elected legislature, and a movement led by local bodies has demanded inclusion under the Sixth Schedule and greater say over land and jobs — a demand that produced large protests in 2024.