« The Monastery of the gigantic valley
with many hued strata ». ©Yannick Laurent
with many hued strata ». ©Yannick Laurent
by Yannick Laurent, doctoral candidate at Wolfson College, University of Oxford.
In the footsteps of Kim, the main character of Kipling’s eponymous novel, we invite you to discover Dangkhar, the ancient capital of a border valley situated in the Western Himalayas.
In spite of a documentation work initiated in the 19th century, what do we really know about the history of this ‘royal seat’ that owed allegiance to the governments of Tibet, Ladakh, and British India over the centuries?
Can the study of material culture and local archives help us to trace the social, religious and political history of the “gigantic valley of many-hued strata”?