Our village. Thirty-two kilometres north-east of Padum, at 3,931 metres, with a ruined fort on the ridge above it and barley fields on the flat ground below.
The village
Zangla sits near the northern end of the inhabited Zanskar valley, where the fields give out and the gorge begins. It is a working farming village: irrigation channels, poplars planted along them, flat roofs stacked with brushwood for winter fuel, and a road that arrives and then stops being a road.
Both of us were born here. It is where our families are, and it is the start of the trekking route we know better than any other — which is why our six-day journey begins at the edge of the village rather than at a car park somewhere convenient.
Zangla Khar, the fort
About a kilometre outside the village, on a hilltop, stands the ruin of Zangla Khar — the old fort or castle, believed to date from around the eleventh century. It is a short, steep walk up and worth doing in the late afternoon, when the light comes down the valley and you can see the whole run of fields below. Zangla was historically a small principality with its own ruling family, and the fort is what is left of that.
What there is to do
- Walk up to the fort in the evening.
- Follow an irrigation channel out along the contour and see how the water is distributed.
- Sit in the fields at harvest time, if you are here in September.
- Start walking south-east, which is what our route does.