Leh Ladakh

Leh is a town in the Leh district of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Leh district, with an area of 45,110 km2, is the second most expansive district in the country, after Kutch in Gujarat. It was the capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh, seat of which was in the Leh Palace, the former mansion of the royal family of Ladakh, built in the same style and about the same time as the Potala Palace-the chief residence of the Dalai Lama until the 14th Dalai Lama fled to Dharamshala, India, during the 1959 Tibetan uprising. Leh is at an altitude of 3,524 metres (11,562 ft), and is connected via National Highway 1 to Srinagar in the southwest and to Manali in the south via the Leh-Manali Highway. In 2010, Leh was heavily damaged by the sudden floods caused by a cloud burst.