Where is Ladakh located?
The north Indian province of Ladakh is located in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and has little in common with the mother country India. One feels much more like in Tibet; the Buddhist culture of the immigrant peoples of the highlands has been kept alive better here than in some places in Tibet. As the “country of high passes” Ladakh is strategically important: in the northeast it borders on China, or Tibet, in the north-west it borders Pakistan and Kashmir in the west. China occupies the Aksai highlands. Indian and Pakistani troops are on the scene of an absurd war on the Siachen glacier, the main drinking water reservoir in the Himalayas. Therefore, one finds several thousand Indian soldiers in Ladakh; the army is the regions largest employer. Leh, the capital of Ladakh, lies in a side valley of the Indu at 3500 meters height. In the almost vegetation-free desert steppe of the Himalayas, it is often minus 30 degrees cold in winter time, whereas the temperature can rise to 40 degrees