Dha Hanu Jeep Safari with Taj Mahal

Highlights

At the confluence of the rivers Shayok and Indus in the Kargil region west of Leh live a people known as Drok-pa. They are racially and culturally distinct from the rest of Ladakhis. Their religious practices more so resemble the animist practices of the pre-Buddhist religion Bon than that of Buddhism as practiced in the rest of Ladakh. One curious cultural feature is their abhorrence of the cow or any of its products. Their ancient traditions and way of life are partly preserved through their songs and hymns. One of these is a description of an ibex hunt and the ibex is specially sacred to them. Another recalls their migration from the Gilgit region further west in Pakistan, an event which must have occurred well before Gilgit came under the influence of Islam. Their language is said to be akin to that spoken in Gilgit and by immigrants from Gilgit settled in Dras south of Kargil. Their facial features, however, as well as their head and dress ornaments are the most striking and first noticeable as one encounters them. Whereas Ladakh’s population seems to be mostly of Tibetan origin, they are of pure Indo-Aryan stock, believed perhaps to have descended from the army of Alexander of Macedonia. Today they number around two thousand inhabitants settled in five villages.