Place · Balti border village · India
Turtuk
Also known as Turtuk, Baltistan, Balti, Yabgo, Nubra
A Balti village of apricot terraces on the Shyok in the far Nubra, the last inhabited place before the Line of Control, and one of only four Balti villages on the Indian side. Its people speak Balti, a Tibetan language written historically in Perso-Arabic script, and are Muslim.
- Function
- Water & infrastructure
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 34.847, 76.829
Worth knowing
It was part of Pakistan until the 1971 war, when the line moved and the village changed country overnight; families were divided by it and many are still divided. It was opened to outsiders only in 2010. A Tibetan-speaking Muslim village with a royal house descended from the Yabgo dynasty of Baltistan is not a category most maps of India have.
Connections (2)
- In the same set asChangthang and the Changpa
Turtuk in the Nubra and the Changthang plateau are the two edges of Ladakh that are not Tibetan Buddhist: a Balti Muslim village that spoke a Tibetan language and belonged to Pakistan until 1971, and a high pastoral plateau grazed by Changpa herders whose winter pastures were cut by the 1962 border. Both are places where a line on a map went through a community.
- Shared sacred geographyBaltit Fort, Hunza
Turtuk and Hunza are both Balti, and the line of control runs between them. Turtuk was part of Baltistan until 1971, when India took it in the war, so its people are Balti-speaking Nurbakhshi Muslims now living in Ladakh with relatives on the other side; Baltit Fort at Karimabad is the Hunza Mirs' seat on the Pakistani side of the same cultural region. The Balti language, the timber-and-stone building, the apricot orchards and the polo are continuous across a border that families are not.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Turtuk”. Records of the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war and the Line of Control; Ladakh administration records on the Nubra Balti villages.
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