Crossing the Great Himalayan Range
The valley of Zanskar in the Himalayas may until recently have been one of the most isolated and inaccessible place on earth. At a height of 4000 m (13,000 ft) there lives a population of traditional Tibetan culture which until the completion of a Himalayan highway to Ladakh could be reached only during the 4 warmest months of the year - and even then only by climbing up dangerous passes to heights of 5,300 m (17,350 feet)! The place is hard to find on maps, and if you can find it, the names of villages may well differ from one map to another. Things are not standardized up there! Even the name of the valley itself, Zanskar, is uncertain and is often spelt wrongly as Zaskar!
In this video-clip, we follow the Bristol University expedition to the Zanskar valley via the Umasi-La pass in 1977, shortly after the valley had been opened to trekkers in 1975.
