Author: Indus Dispatch
By Bharat Nanda Pakistan has spent considerable political and military capital portraying the May 2025 confrontation with India as a historic victory. Its generals have spoken of strategic brilliance, its ministers have dismissed reports of Pakistani losses, and its propaganda machinery has repeatedly circulated claims of destroyed Indian airbases, neutralised S-400 systems and damaged BrahMos facilities. The official story emerging from Islamabad is one of overwhelming success achieved at little cost. Yet armies reveal the truth about wars not through victory speeches, but through what they urgently change after the guns fall silent. Pakistan’s actions after the May 2025 ceasefire…
On the banks of the Karakash River, north of the Karakoram, Shahidulla once marked the point where the hardest mountain crossings gave way to the caravan roads of Yarkand and Khotan. By Pooja Bhatia Some places become important because caravans begin there. Others matter because they mark the moment when travellers realise they have survived the worst part of the journey. Shahidulla, also rendered historically as Shahidula and in some traditions as Shuidullah, belonged to this second category. For merchants travelling north from Ladakh towards Yarkand, the crossing of the Karakoram was among the most dangerous sections of the journey.…
By Bharat Nanda The year 2026 marks an important turning point in India’s foreign policy journey as the country assumes the BRICS Chairmanship and takes on a larger role in shaping the future of emerging economies. India’s leadership of BRICS is not merely about chairing an international forum; it reflects the country’s growing position as a responsible global power with the ability to influence international debates and represent the aspirations of the Global South. The 18th BRICS Summit, scheduled to be held in New Delhi, highlights India’s expanding diplomatic influence and its determination to promote a more balanced, inclusive and…
Beyond the Karakoram, in the great oasis city of Yarkand, Indian merchants once maintained their own lodging houses, shops and trading networks. Gurdial Sarai preserves the memory of that commercial world. By Pooja Bhatia Yarkand once stood among the most important commercial cities linking India with Central Asia. Situated on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, the oasis lay at the meeting point of caravan routes coming from Kashgar, Khotan, Ladakh and the wider Central Asian world. For Indian merchants, especially those from Kashmir, Ladakh and Punjab, Yarkand was not an unknown foreign city at the end of an…
FORGOTTEN GEOGRAPHY Taklakot: Gateway to Kailash Before modern pilgrimage arrangements and motor roads, Taklakot stood at one of the most important junctions between the Indian Himalayas, western Tibet and the sacred landscape of Kailash-Manasarovar. By Pooja Bhatia Some places become important because they are destinations. Others become important because almost everyone heading towards a greater destination has to pass through them. Taklakot belongs to the second category. Known today more commonly as Purang, the settlement lies in western Tibet, close to the routes descending towards Nepal and the Indian Himalayas. For generations of traders, officials, pilgrims and local communities, it…
At a bend of the upper Indus, where Ladakh meets the Tibetan plateau, a tiny settlement survived for centuries because it stood on a road larger than itself — a road of trade, pilgrimage, pastoral movement and political memory. By Pooja Bhatia There are places whose importance comes from size, population or political power. Demchok belongs to another category entirely. For much of its recorded history, it was little more than a small settlement beside the Indus. There were no great walls, no large market and no royal court. Yet the name appears again and again in chronicles, travel accounts,…
Near Demchok in eastern Ladakh, a small mountain stream has carried several names through history. Behind the modern Charding Nullah lies an older geographical memory tied to routes, pasture, pilgrimage and the upper Indus. By Pooja Bhatia Great rivers dominate history. The Indus, Ganga, Brahmaputra and Oxus have shaped kingdoms, agriculture and entire civilisations. Smaller streams rarely receive the same attention. Yet in the high Himalayas, a modest stream could determine the success of a journey. It could provide the only reliable water source for travellers and pack animals. Its banks could offer grazing. Its valley could guide movement through…
Between Dumchele and the great bend of the Indus lies a long stretch of pastureland that rarely appears in conventional histories. Yet Skakjung once formed part of a wider landscape of grazing, caravan movement and cross-Himalayan exchange. By Pooja Bhatia Not every historically important place was a city. Some places mattered because they provided water. Others mattered because caravans could rest there. Still others became important because animals could graze there when surrounding highlands were buried under snow. Skakjung, a long stretch of pastureland along the Indus in eastern Ladakh, belongs to this quieter geography. It does not possess the…
Today Aksai Chin is viewed almost entirely through the prism of borders and strategic rivalry. Yet older routes across the plateau connected Ladakh with the Karakash valley, Khotan and Yarkand, raising questions about geographical memories that predate modern frontiers. By Pooja Bhatia Few places in the Himalayas are today discussed as exclusively through the language of geopolitics as Aksai Chin. The name evokes maps, boundaries, military deployments and the India-China dispute. Its high-altitude plains are usually imagined as remote, empty and almost inaccessible — a vast cold desert lying between Ladakh, the Karakoram and the Kunlun mountains. That contemporary image…
Along the northern rim of the Tarim Basin, modern Aksu occupies the site of an old oasis kingdom remembered in Buddhist Sanskrit as Bharuka and by the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang as Baluka. By Pooja Bhatia Modern Aksu lies along the northern edge of the Tarim Basin, between Kashgar and Kucha. Today it is known principally as an important city of Xinjiang, but its historical geography reaches far deeper into the world of the Silk Roads. For centuries, Aksu stood on one of the great overland corridors linking China, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Caravans moving along the northern edge…
The oasis of Turpan was one of the great meeting places of the northern Silk Road. Could an older Indic name, remembered as Druva Par, belong to the same historical landscape? By Pooja Bhatia Few places in Central Asia demonstrate the power of water over civilisation as dramatically as Turpan. Located in an exceptionally arid depression east of the Tarim Basin, Turpan seems an unlikely place for a major settlement. Summers are intensely hot, rainfall is scarce and the surrounding landscape can appear almost hostile to permanent habitation. Yet for centuries Turpan flourished as one of the most important oasis…
On the northern Silk Road, between Kucha and Turpan, lay a kingdom remembered in Indic tradition as Agni-desa, in Chinese records as Yanqi and later in Turkic-Persian usage as Karashahr. By Pooja Bhatia Modern maps identify the oasis town as Yanqi, while historical travellers and later Central Asian traditions knew the region as Karashahr. Yet older Buddhist and Indic geographical traditions preserve another name: Agni-desa. The name is striking. In Sanskrit, Agni means fire and desa means land or country. Agni-desa can therefore be read literally as the “Land of Fire”. Why this particular name came to be associated with…
Before it became modern Kuqa, Kucha was one of Central Asia’s great Buddhist kingdoms, a meeting ground where Indian learning, Central Asian culture and Chinese civilisation came together. By Pooja Bhatia Along the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert lies the modern city of Kuqa in Xinjiang. To most readers in India, it is an unfamiliar name on a distant map. Yet nearly two thousand years ago, the same oasis, then widely known as Kucha, occupied an extraordinary position in the intellectual history of Asia. Kucha was more than a trading station on the Silk Road. It became a centre…
For years, the India–China border story has been dominated by confrontation, patrol face-offs, military build-up, competing maps and the long shadow of the Galwan clash. Now, a new development points to a quieter but important shift. India and China have agreed to establish new high-level military meeting points and direct hotlines in the Eastern and Middle sectors of the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The India-side locations identified for these new arrangements are Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh and Joshimath in Uttarakhand. Their selection is significant because both lie close to sensitive parts of the disputed frontier. This is not a…
On 28 August 2026, China’s top political advisory body stripped General Zhao Zongqi of his membership offering no explanation and announcing no formal investigation. For most outside observers, the name meant little. But for anyone tracking the India-China border, Zhao’s removal was unmistakably significant: he was the first commander of the PLA’s Western Theatre Command, the officer who oversaw the 2017 Doklam standoff and the deadly 2020 Galwan Valley clash the two most serious military confrontations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in decades. His quiet fall from Favor has become the trigger event exposing just how deep, and how unresolved,…
At the western edge of the Tarim Basin, Kashgar stood where routes from India, Central Asia, Persia and China met. Could one of its older names preserve a Sanskrit memory of that crossroads? By Pooja Bhatia Few cities embody the idea of the Silk Roads as completely as Kashgar. Standing near the western edge of the Tarim Basin, below the great mountain systems of the Pamirs, Tian Shan and Karakoram, Kashgar occupied a position of extraordinary geographical importance. Routes arriving from China, the Tarim oases, Central Asia, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent converged in its vicinity. Merchants could move from…
Beneath the modern name Hotan lies the memory of Gosthana, a Buddhist kingdom where Indian, Iranian and Central Asian traditions met along the southern Silk Road. By Pooja Bhatia On the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert lies Hotan, or Hetian, an oasis city in present-day Xinjiang. To the modern reader it appears remote, separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Kunlun and Karakoram mountains and hundreds of kilometres of some of Asia’s most difficult terrain. Its historical geography tells a very different story. For centuries, the oasis was one of the great Buddhist centres of Central Asia. Caravans passed…
Could an old Indian geographical tradition preserve the memory of the river system that sustained the great oasis kingdoms of Central Asia? By Pooja Bhatia The Tarim Basin is one of the most remarkable geographical regions of Asia. Ringed by the Tian Shan, Kunlun and other great mountain systems, and dominated by the vast Taklamakan Desert, it appears at first glance to be a landscape of isolation. Yet for centuries, some of the most important cities of the Silk Roads flourished around its edges. Khotan, Kucha, Kashgar, Aksu and other oasis settlements survived because mountain-fed rivers brought water into an…
Long before the Karakoram became synonymous with borders and strategic frontiers, its passes formed part of a great network connecting Kashmir and Ladakh with Central Asia. By Pooja Bhatia The Karakoram today is usually described in superlatives. It contains some of the highest mountains on Earth, enormous glaciers, extreme weather and terrain that has challenged explorers for generations. In contemporary imagination, it is also closely associated with borders, military geography and strategic competition. There is, however, another Karakoram hidden beneath this modern image. For centuries, these mountains were crossed by merchants, monks, pilgrims, envoys and scholars. Caravan routes connected Kashmir…
Jammu, July 25: Indus Dispatch contributor and Jammu-based author Bharat Nanda today marked an important milestone in his literary journey with the formal unveiling of his latest book, Beyond the Himalayas: Rediscovering India’s Forgotten Geography, by Shri Kavinder Gupta, Hon’ble Governor of Himachal Pradesh, at a function held in Jammu. The book explores India’s forgotten civilisational geography beyond the Himalayan ranges, tracing the ancient networks of trade, pilgrimage, learning and cultural exchange that once connected the Indian subcontinent with Tibet, Xinjiang and Central Asia. Through historical maps, manuscripts, travel accounts and archaeological evidence, it revisits the region’s shared past and…