Welcome to Leh and the most over photographed palace in the world.   Go to a search engine and do an image search on Leh and hundreds of pictures of the thing will show up.   Do a search on India and it'll probably match the Taj Mahal, picture for picture.   Do a search on anything at all and eventually a picture of the thing will show up.   So I'm posting up my copy of it and adding to the glut of pictures of the place - so tough s***!!!

Right, to the paragraph of history spiel.   Leh palace, former home of the Ladakh royal family, who got kicked out by the Kashmiris when they invaded in 1834 and sent to live in Stok at the other side of the valley.   The palace still has some shell damage, so if you step off the beaten route to the roof, be careful where you put your foot.   If you want to get to the place, then turn right and into the back streets in front of the mosque and somehow make your way up to the east (far) end to get in (small fee to help now quite advanced restoration work).

Oh yes, the mosque - Jami Masjid was built when the Fifth Dalai Lama sent his Mongol horsemen friends into Ladakh, after Ladakh picked a fight with Tibet in 1639.   Ladakh only avoided getting stomped all over by calling for help from Moslem Kashmir.   The price at the time was the King had to convert to Islam and Jami Masjid was built below the palace to encourage the development of Islam in Ladakh.   However, Islam in this part of Ladakh didn't really get going until the later Kashmiri invasion proper, when Kashmiris and their descendants remained resident in the town.   Islam (especially the Shia variety) is doing okay here, as another new mosque down the road and various village mosques in the areas around Leh testify.

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Unbelievable, I've not used the word 'chorten' for once - put simply, chortens are the same as stupas and 'gompa' is the local word for monastery.

Shanti is Japanese built and funded - if you want something a little different and your Buddhas in 3D instead of 2D, it's actually worth the walk.   The views of Leh are actually better form here than the palace.   Anyone heading for Leh and wanting to have a look, just head north past the west side of the palace on the main road, veer off and you'll find yourself in backpacker hostel territory.   Keep heading along this road and you'll come out somewhere near the bottom and some great whacking steps.   Oh, this is the one place you'll actually get some Indian style hassle in Leh, from a bloke with a motorbike, offering you a cheap lift to the top.

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The local Ladakhis in general are not very pushy and you'll get all the time in the world to look at souvenirs.  If you do get approached, it will most likely be by one of the Kashmiri shop owners (hint, if politics is mentioned, be discrete - if worst comes to worst, blame America, even if you are American).   Whilst you do get some women in the older style Ladakhi clothes (as in the picture above), most seem to be opting for a Kashmiri style dress, which can make it seem if there are more Moslems in town than there actually are.   The truth of the matter is that the local women just seem to find the Kashmiri clothes more comfortable to wear.   As for the men, the younger lads look as though they've been shopping on a British or American high street (unless they're a monk - even then, you'll see plenty Nike trainers under their orange robes).

As regards buying stuff here, you're not going to force the price low.   My normally very effective haggling tactics could not budge them down to less than 70% of first price (and you still have to work hard) - the 30% or so you get in Mogul territory just isn't going to happen up here.

Then there's the dogs, man's lovable four legged friends.   No hassle during the day, they just seem to run past you in a hurry to get nowhere in particular; however (especially in Leh it seems), they seem to have this sport known as 'keep the tourist awake for as long as possible'. The winners go forward into the next round the following night. The overall winner is declared at the end of the tourist season when the last tourists are wishing the Koreans would open up restaurants in town (the Koreans really like dogs).

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