Ladakh
is a land like no other. Bounded by two of the world's mightiest
mountain ranges, the Great Himalayas and the Karakoram, it lies
athwart two other, the Ladakh range and the Zanskar range . In
geological terms, this is a young land, formed only a few million
years ago by the buckling and folding of the earth's crust as the
Indian sub-continent pushed with irresistible force against the
immovable mass of Asia. Its basic contours, uplifted by these
unimaginable tectonic movements, have been modified over the
millennia by the opposite process of erosion, sculpted into the form
one sees today by wind and water.
