Deep in the coldest months of 1979, a boisterous young postal worker called Tashi Tundup selected six Zanskari men for an ambitious expedition. He had been tasked with setting up Zanskar’s first post office. Snow blanketed the barley fields, and the mountain passes were closed. As there was no postal or telegraph system, it was almost impossible to communicate with the outside world. News was normally carried by nomadic traders who passed through Zanskar in spring and autumn. There was only one means of leaving the valley over winter. When temperatures dropped, the Zanskar River froze, creating a sinuous corridor of ice famously known as the Chadar or shroud, the ice sheet, the ice road, the frozen one.
The journey was both potent with meaning and terribly dangerous. Zanskar has two high-altitude valleys, the Stod and the Lungnak, the rivers of which meet in the plain around Padum. These rivers form the Zanskar River that continues northwards through a steep twisting gorge for about 150 kilometres until it reaches central Ladakh before spilling into the Indus. Over the centuries, Zanskaris had travelled over the icy path to carry butter wrapped in animal skins for trading in the markets of Leh. Tapping the...
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