The Ladakhi People of Little Tibet

High in the trans-Himalaya and the Karakoram, in a cold desert of towering peaks and deep river valleys, live the Ladakhi people, heirs to a Tibetan Buddhist civilisation in the far north of India. In a land often called “Little Tibet,” among the highest inhabited places on earth, they have built monasteries on the crags, wrung green fields from the desert, and sustained a way of life of remarkable resilience and devotion.

Speakers of a Tibetic language, worshippers at the great gompas of Thiksey and Hemis, and masters of survival at extreme altitude, the Ladakhis combine profound Buddhist spirituality with the practical genius of a mountain people. This article traces their origins, language, homeland, society, religion, and traditions, and the extraordinary high-mountain world in which their culture has flourished.