Word: ladakh
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China and India share a border 2,175 miles (3,500 km) long. On the Indian side, it runs from states in the northeast that are plagued by insurgency to the glaciers of Ladakh, on the edge of Kashmir. On the Chinese side, the region is just as troubled, encompassing Tibet and Xinjiang, home of the Uighurs, some of whom clashed violently with Chinese earlier this year. India and China fought a brief war in 1962, when China captured territory in - for India - a mortifyingly rapid incursion. They skirmished again in 1967, but since 1993 the two countries have coexisted...
...these contraptions? This line of thinking is scarier than orcas or floatplanes because it leads to seductive questions: ''Could I live in this chilly, light-struck wilderness? Could I be an Alaskan?'' Such wild surmising, which is half the fun of travel, churns dependable fantasies anywhere, in Salzburg or Ladakh. But for a U.S. citizen, the daydreams seem especially strong in Alaska. This is, after all, his own nation, yet it is stranger than Zanzibar. The pale north light itself is delusive, lingering in the weeks before and after the solstice till midnight and more. The tourist's mind accepts...
...villages targeted by Norphel is the Buddhist hamlet of Sakti, tucked in the mountains of the Ladakh Range that stretch above the Indus River. Village head Tsering Kundan recalled the rush of optimism when Norphel's glacier was first built in 2001. People grabbed up more land to cultivate, planting groves of willow and poplar saplings between the fields. But now they're letting their man-made glacier fall into disrepair, says Kundan. Villagers accuse one another of secretly diverting its water, and the local watershed committee is neglecting to spend government funds on maintenance. "They're more interested...
...Norphel found his state funds cut in 2006 as part of the fallout from an unrelated political dispute between government officials and Ladakh's notoriously crowded field of NGOs. Still, the quixotic Ice Man remains determined to prove the power of his invention. His biggest and most successful glacier is also the most remote, meaning that few officials are willing to make the seven-mile hike to see it. One nearer to town has been reduced to a series of dirt pits from neglect and a major flood. Unperturbed, Norphel sees this as a chance to rebuild the perfect showpiece...
...begins to bleed into the transit hotel in Singapore. The Australian dollars I was using on Monday have become American dollars and then Singapore dollars, losing a little in value with each exchange. Winter has become summer has become what feels like spring. Yet when I finally get to Ladakh, and look at all the snowcaps, the shockingly blue sky, the monasteries perched on hilltops all across the magical openness, I realize I've done something that I could not have dreamed of as a boy. Traveling by air, as has been said of democracy, is a terrible idea - until...