Ladakhi
Black-Necked Crane Designated Ladakh’s State Bird
The government of Ladakh has just declared the black-necked crane as the state bird of the union territory. The bird has important symbolic value for the Ladakhi people. According to news reports on September 1 in the Kashmir Observer and in Outlook India, the Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory of Ladakh also declared the […]
Tourists Flood Ladakh
While some of the peaceful societies portrayed in this website receive relatively few visitors, for others, tourists are very important. The people of Ladakh are among the latter, as numerous news stories over the years have indicated. One report in 2016 pointed out the differing attitudes toward tourism among the Ladakhi. They appreciate the positive […]
Apricot Festival in Ladakh
The government of Ladakh has organized a festival to celebrate the cultivation of apricots. According to a report in the Times of India on April 19, the festival attracted thousands of travelers—backpackers, honeymooners, and vacationers in general—from various places around India. The cultivation and processing of apricots is an important agricultural industry in the Union […]
Ladakhis Protect Wildlife
A Ladakhi man who made one of his life goals protecting wildlife in the Hemis National Park told his story in a blog post on February 21. He and his co-villagers in the mountains of Ladakh decided that increasing the numbers of wildlife would promote tourism and provide economic benefits to the local economy, as […]
Electricity in Photoksar
Photoksar, sometimes spelled “Fotoksar,” a remote Ladakhi village, made the news last week for finally getting electricity from the outside world. The village of 241 people, as of the most recent census of India, is located high in the mountains about 100 rough road miles west of Leh beyond a pass that is closed in […]
Religious Toleration among Ladakhi Muslims
A lot of the reporting about the peacefulness of the Ladakhi has focused on the Leh District of Ladakh, where most of the people are Buddhists. An article in this website in May 2019 examined the scholarship of different experts who examined the reasons for their nonviolence. Uwe Gielen, we reported, argued that the Buddhist […]
Ladakhi Response to Coronavirus
A small Ladakhi village now requires all visitors to wash their hands before they are allowed to enter, according to a news report in the Deccan Herald last Thursday. The village of Latoo, in the Kargil District of Ladakh, is taking its own approach to fighting the spread of the coronavirus. The villagers posted a […]
A Peaceful Protest in Ladakh
A massive, but entirely peaceful, demonstration was held in Leh on Sunday, January 12, by Ladakhi students demanding self-government within the provisions of the 6th schedule in the Indian constitution. Schedule 6 allows the government to form autonomous district councils to administer areas that have already been given autonomy within their states. According to the […]
Ladakhis Prepare for Climate Change
It took a little over a week for the Ladakhis to spring into action. After the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] issued a report on the perils that changing climate conditions pose to the Hindu Kush/Himalayan region of Asia, several groups in Ladakh announced an action plan to deal with the crisis. Ladakhis […]
Self Government for Ladakh
Headlines around the world announced the decision by India’s government at the beginning of last week to suspend Article 370 of its constitution, which has maintained a special status for the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Posturing by India and Pakistan continued throughout the week, with both of the nuclear powers quite aware that they […]
