Ancient Routes
For
all its seeming inaccessibility, Ladakh's position at the centre of a network
of trade routes traditionally kept it in constant touch withthe outside world.
From Chinese Central Asia,the mighty Karakoram range was breached at the Karakoram
pass, a giddy 18,350 feet (5,600m). The trail from Yarkand crossed five other
passes, of which the most feared was the glacier, encumbered Saser-la, north
of Nubra. Travellers from Tibet could take one of two main routes. From the
central part of the country, the Tsang-po valley, they could pass the holy
sites of Kailash-Mansarovar and reach Fartok, on a tributary of the upper
Indus, from where they followed the river down to Leh.
Trade with the pashm producing areas of western Tibet flowed by a more northerly
route, taking in the village of Rudok, a few miles into Tibet, and from
there across the 18,300 feet (5,578m ) Chang-la to the Indus, and so to
Leh.
Baltistan, joined administratively with Ladakh for 100 years, was linked
to it either via the Indus up to its confluence with the Suru-Shingo river,
and on up to Kargil; or by the Chorbat-la pass over the Ladakh range, the
trail dropping down to the Indus 40 km below Khalatse, and following the
river up to Leh.
The two main approaches toLadakh from south of the Himalaya are roughly
the same as today's motor roads from Srinagar and Manali. The merchants
and pilgrims who made up the majority of travellers in the premodern era,
travelled on foot or horseback, taking about 16 days to reach Srinagar;
though a man in hurry, riding non-stop and with changes of horse arranged
ahead of time all along the route, could do it in as little as three days.
The mails, carried in relays by runners stationed every four miles or so,
took four or five days. That was before the wheel as a means of transport
was introduced into Ladakh, which happened only when the Srinagar- Leh motor-road
was constructed as recently as the early 1960s.
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