I don’t have a ton of recommendations so I’m clubbing these all together. First movies, then music, then books. For Ladakh travel recommendations, see my Leh post and other Ladakh posts.
Movies
In my Leh post I briefly talk about the movie theaters in Leh. Check that out if you’re interested.
Many Indian films shoot in Ladakh, but not many actually take place there, it’s mainly just used as an exotic backdrop, often for songs. The exceptions would be war films about Kargil and other conflicts in Ladakh, but those are pretty disconnected from Ladakhi culture. Excluding war movies, the only mainstream Indian movie I can think of that actually takes place here is Dil Se, but even that doesn’t go much further than exotic backdrop territory. There’s a decent selection of independent stuff to watch, though (largely not by Ladakhi filmmakers, it seems). Unfortunately I haven’t seen any, so this is my personal watch list.
The biggest film I know of set in Ladakh is Samsara by the well-regarded director Pan Nalin (this is unrelated to the better known Ron Fricke documentary, which also shot some footage in Ladakh) which is about a Buddhist monk in Ladakh and is actually in the Ladakhi language. It got some great reviews and was distributed by Miramax in North America though I can’t find anything about its release. Trailer here, looks awesome.
I’m not sure if Nalin’s follow-up film Valley of Flowers specifically takes place in Ladakh, but it shot there and is the only movie I know of to shoot in Ladakh to have a historical Silk Road setting (though I’m not sure how big of a portion that is in the film, it is a globe-trotting, era spanning affair). Another awesome trailer, though this one strangely has no reviews. I unfortunately haven’t seen either of these and I’m not sure if high quality versions are available for streaming (neither are available on Blu-ray, and I can’t even find good quality trailers), but I will definitely watch them one day.
Another good looking Ladakhi language film is Walking with the Wind, by the director Praveen Morchhale who I hadn’t previously heard of but seems good, and like Nalin he hails from central India but makes movies all over India. Unfortunately this is my least favorite genre, a “kids in the village” movie, but it has a donkey as a supporting character so that cancels out the kid thing. Nice trailer, beautifully shot, it will probably bore me but I’ll give it a chance.
The film Ri by Achal Mishra is shot entirely in Ladakh. I can’t find a trailer and am not sure if it’s available to watch anywhere, though it premiered at a film fest in 2023 so should be available soon. I periodically see Mishra called one of India’s best independent filmmakers today, though I haven’t seen his work yet. This is said to be experimental and light on narrative, and the reviews are mixed, but is widely acclaimed for being stunningly shot.
There’s also In Retreat by Maisam Ali which played in the ACID section at Cannes in 2024. One review called it “an understated 75-minute drama about a man who returns to a mountain town that he left many years ago.” The descriptions and the clip I watched honestly make it look boring to me, but I’ll watch it one day. I think this is the only film on my list that’s actually by a filmmaker who lived in Ladakh, though I’m not sure he identifies as Ladakhi. I wish there were movies about the director’s ancestors, and other similar subjects: “My forefathers, originally from Kashmir, were traders. They lived in Ladakh but would also travel for trade to parts of Central Asia and China.” Maybe I should start a gofundme for that movie. There's so many interesting, amazing stories that India's mainstream filmmakers ignore, but then the independent filmmakers just want to make stuff like "an understated examination of dislocation" or whatever.
Another promising film I came across is Chuskit by Priya Ramasubban, who I’m not familiar with. “To chase her dream of going to school in her remote Himalayan village, a feisty paraplegic girl locks horns with her tradition-bound grandfather.” It looks like a good, well-made movie, if not exactly my thing, and a good portrait of life in Ladakh. Here’s the trailer.
Lastly, there’s a short film (50 minutes) starring Irrfan Khan called Road to Ladakh, which shot there but doesn’t seem to have much of a focus on the local culture. I haven’t heard anything about it but the director Ashvin Kumar got an Oscar nomination for his next short, so maybe it’s good. Not sure if it’s available in good quality anywhere.
These films are mostly by outsiders and are made for film fests moreso than for local consumption, but there is a small “local” Ladakhi film industry. The films don’t look so good, unfortunately. They do have a lot of promise, though, with great locations, an old world Ladakh setting, and a quasi-western feel. They’re just bogged down by low production values and soap opera-y aesthetics. Here’s one random trailer which looks pretty representative of them:
I also spent a few minutes skimming through the 2005 hit film Delwa on Youtube. I love what it’s going for and there’s some killer visuals, but I suspect it’d be tough to sit through. Still, I wonder if there are some potential trashterpieces and hidden gems of local Ladakhi cinema out there. I don’t want to be the guinea pig watching a bunch of them in order to find out, though. I hope some Ladakhi auteurs emerge that cover similar territory but up the craft level to make a great Chutagi Western. I’d love to hear from anyone with good-ish taste in cinema who has seen some of these.
I didn’t find much to read on Ladakh’s film industry, but there is a good 2008 article on the subject in… The Christian Science Monitor? Maybe I should add them to my list of travel research resources.
“Around every corner in this distant Himalayan district of India, someone is in the movies. Bureaucrats and Buddhist monks write screenplays, taxi drivers and cops play villains and heroines, and the superstar actress gets paid $1,000 a movie.
Ladakhi films première to packed crowds in the capital, Leh, in an auditorium just off the polo field. Then they head to the villages, shown with LCD projectors and portable speakers. “
The whole article is worth reading.
Referenced in the article is the documentary on the industry Out of Thin Air, here’s the trailer. I'd love to watch the whole film but I don’t know where to find it.
I also found a good 2011 article in TOI on the industry, worthwhile if you’re interested in more. I like the story of the director who says the biggest challenge is finding heroines for his film and who would sit around drinking tea and people watching to find pretty faces to cast.
Here’s an ad for a Ladakhi film that I saw somewhere in town. I thought it was awesome how it lists the village the crewmembers are from next to their names, but I only now realize that this is how their names are. The singer Dorjay from Stakmo credited on the poster is presumably the same Dorjay Stakmo whose music I link to later in the music section.
The only non-Indian film I know of that shot in Ladakh is Tarsem’s The Fall (again, just an exotic backdrop, and also Tarsem is Indian). I’m assuming it’s just too difficult getting permits and dealing with the infrastructure, but the landscape here really does make for an amazing backdrop. Everywhere you look you can easily imagine Tom Cruise running, Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle, Tom Cruise flying a helicopter, Tom Cruise flying a fighter jet, Tom Cruise rock climbing, etc. Ladakh actually gets referenced in Mission Impossible - Fallout and the climax takes place in Kashmir with a setting that looks a lot like Ladakh, but they shot it in New Zealand and Norway. Maybe one day. Seven Years in Tibet planned to shoot in Ladakh but issues with the Chinese government threatening to shut off energy to the region from a Chinese hydroplant nixed that, and also according to Wikipedia they “refuse[d] to allow the film to set up a banking account” though I don’t know why the film would need a Chinese bank account. I want to set up a Chinese bank account one day, though, so I obviously agree with their efforts to thwart that terrible film’s production.
I always love seeing old footage of places, here’s some that I found of Ladakh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rBfD9KEugg (quite long and contains no information, I watched at 1.5x speed while doing other stuff)
Music:
I enjoyed the traditional Ladakhi music that I heard, though I didn’t delve super deep into it. Here are two good examples, both have a different feel:
Some weird video compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNZYmZ4qr8g
Zunglu: Folk Songs of Ladakh by Dorjay Stakmo: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=OLAK5uy_mO9yKNC6AWyXp3sNvmmkvEO0Pak_qA63o or on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Zm1m41bBWBC6oisue4ohi?si=bBGjHWwwTlSplYQO7rKGwQ&utm_source=copy-link
There’s more I found just browsing “Ladakh folk music” on YouTube, but I didn’t find many albums, playlists, or good resources for it so my listening was kind of random. But it’s worth clicking around if you want more.
Beyond this, I didn’t find much to listen to. I only recently came across a Ladakhi folk fusion group called Dashugs. I listened to all of the songs on their YouTube page and quite liked most of what I heard, other than a few that had more of a modern pop feel. Here’s a live performance.
As for the modern Ladakhi popular music I heard, it’s too repetitive and junky sounding for me, but it was nice to listen to while in Ladakh. When it was on the radio, I never wanted it changed. Here’s an example I found on Youtube, and I feel like most of the songs sounded the same. Not great stuff, but for whatever reason it goes very well with the scenery. It reminded me of the music they played in taxi cabs in Nepal. I like the traditional stuff more though.
Some of you might like the album Fatima by Ruhail Qaisar, described by Pitchfork as “a psychogeographic survey of the Himalayan region of Ladakh rendered in ambient drones and harsh noise.” But if you, like me, think that sounds like pretentious BS, well, you may have the same reaction to the album that I had…
I also found some documentaries about music in Ladakh that look great. I regret that I didn’t know about them when I was there. Saving these for a future trip:
Kharyok, a film on music in Ladakh - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT-gx4XdcUg
The Song Collector - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WdFrEP77jE
Reading:
The best book store in Ladakh is called Ladakh Book Store in the market in Leh. It’s small but has a good selection. There was one other book store somewhere around the corner in the main market. If you want something specific, you should get it before your trip, though, and even if you’re there for a long time I’m not sure how reliable Amazon is once you’re there (I ordered a few things to Kashmir that never made it, though maybe the shipping situation has improved in the past few years).
There’s a disappointing lack of books on Ladakh, both fiction and non-fiction, at least that I could find. It seemed like the two books to read on Ladakh are Ladakh: Crossroads of High Asia by Janet Rizvi and A Journey in Ladakh: Encounters with Buddhism by Andrew Harvey. I didn’t think I’d like the Andrew Harvey book, which seems like a spiritual memoir. I wanted the Janet Rizvi book, but it was quite expensive at the store. I wasn’t as hardcore in my reading at the time, which is something I regret. I enjoyed the concise history sections in my Blue Guide to India book and what I read on Wikipedia, though I’ve forgotten it all.
One book that looks awesome is Janet Rizvi’s Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh. Totally reading that if I ever go back. Probably not a good recommendation for normal people though.
This is a good writeup on books about Ladakh. Unfortunately none of these books call to me. https://elenturner.com/books-about-ladakh/
I enjoyed The Ladakhi Kitchen, which even beyond the food I found to be insightful and interesting on Ladakhi culture. Recommended.
I did find some good looking academic books while browsing online, but they're hard to find and expensive. I gotta read Trade and Contemporary Society along the Silk Road: An ethno-history of Ladakh.
Forsaking Paradise: Narratives from the Mountains of Ladakh by Abdul Ghani Sheikh could be good. I can’t figure out if its stories are fiction or non-fiction. The translator’s introduction that I skimmed through in the free Kindle preview was pretty interesting, more in depth than most of what I could find to read on Ladakh.
I didn’t see any good longform journalism on Ladakh, surely some must be out there. This is probably the best single read on Ladakh that I found. I always really love reading William Dalrymple but his writing on Ladakh had less of interest to me than usual, though it's still worthwhile. I did find a history blog on the Himalayas with a number of posts on Ladakh, I skimmed through some and they seemed quite interesting and had planned to delve into it and read more but totally forgot about it until going through my notes right now. Nonetheless, worth checking out, more substantive than the bulk of the articles I found while google searching.
The one bit of local fiction I found, available at the local book stores, is the short story collection Betty's Butter Tea by Lhundup Gyalpo. I regret not getting it, but at the time I didn't feel like buying a random book I couldn't find any reviews for. It's currently free on Kindle Unlimited so it may be worth checking out.
I think the Leh bookstores also had a book with some retellings of local legends, another book I should have bought, but I have no idea what the name is. I recently spotted Curious Tales from the Himalayas, which has two folk stories from Ladakh featured in it. Internet Archive has a collection of folk tales from Ladakh. And there’s The Peeping Mountain : Stories About Folklore, Customs, Traditions and Beliefs From Nubra Valley by Nordan Otzer.
I also recently came across The Story of rGyalam Kesar: From the Legend of Ladakh by Kacho Asfandyar Khan Faridon. “The Story of rGyalam Kesar has been immensely popular in a vast area that includes Mongolia, Central Asia, Tibet, Ladakh, and Baltistan. This book is the pioneering effort by a Ladakhi writer to document the Ladakhi version of the epic story of rGyalam Kesar that has been passed down through oral traditions.” Unfortunately no copies are available on Amazon. There’s some good background information on it here, though the review didn’t inspire me to read this particular version. I’d love to get some version of the story, though. If you type “King Gesar” into Amazon you will find many versions of the story, though none are the Ladakhi version, and I don’t know which are good for beginners.
The book stores also had some local picture books which are worth flipping through, the images are incredible.
As nothing local felt like the right book for me at the time, I thought I’d read a book on Buddhism and went with An End to Suffering by Pankaj Mishra (though it barely has anything to do with Ladakh). It’s part memoir (enjoyable and sometimes interesting), part Buddha biography (enjoyable and informative), and part exploration of Buddhist philosophy (some interesting stuff but often insufferable, but maybe if you like philosophy you’ll like these parts more), but my favorite part was the history of the “discovery of Buddhism,” focused on European archaeologists, linguists, scholars, and explorers who just a few centuries ago pieced together a basic understanding of Buddhism and its history. I had no idea that until then nobody knew Buddhism came from India or even that the religions practiced in various Buddhist countries were variations of the same religion (this sounds so crazy to me that I can’t help but wonder if I misinterpreted or am misremembering, like how is this possible?). There’s not much on the spread of Buddhism in Asia, it’s more focused on Buddha’s time and then the past few hundred years. It’s far from all encompassing, but I liked that it’s a personal take, and if you want a general, very readable/accessible book on Buddhism then I recommend it.
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