Zangla Palace

Kashmir & Ladakh


The three-storey ruin of a 17th-century royal palace sits on a crag surveying Zangla village and the valley looking north towards Hanamur. From 1823, Hungarian scholar Alexander (Sándor) Csoma de Kőrös took a room here while compiling the first Western dictionary of Tibetan. For well over a century thereafter, the place was effectively forgotten, until 2008 when the structure, on the verge of collapse, was rescued by a Hungarian organisation inspired by the connection to the scholar.

A series of stone wall fragments are dotted around the summit site, which is now conveniently reached by a stone-flagged stairway from an asphalted access road/car park.


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