Tingmosgang is a fortress in Temisgam village, on the bank of the Indus River in Ladakh, in northwestern India. It is 92 km west of Leh, near Khalatse, and north of the present main road. The town has a palace and the monastery over a hillock.
History
Tingmosgang was built by King Drag-pa-Bum as his capital in the 15th century. It is through his grandson Bhagan that Ladakh's second dynasty originated – Namgyals (Victorious) – which politically endured until the Dogra annexation in 1841 and whose lineage still lives on in the Stok Palace.
Tingmosgang is significant from an historical point of view. After the death of the Fifth Dalai Lama, the regent ruling Tibet sent the head of the Drukpa order here as an emissary, and in 1684 the Treaty of Tingmosgang, sometimes called the Treaty of Temisgam, was signed between Ladakh and Tibet, ending the Tibet–Ladakh–Mughal War and demarcating the boundary between the two countries. The treaty also provided for Ladakh's exclusive right to trade in pashmina wool produced in Tibet, in exchange for brick-tea available from Ladakh. Ladakh was also bound to send periodic missions to Lhasa, carrying presents for the Dalai Lama.
Geographically, the Indus Valley is the back-bone of Ladakh, historically from Upshi down to Khaltse, it is Ladakh's heartland. All the main places associated with Ladakh's dynastic history – Shey, Leh, Basgo and Tingmosgang – together with all the important gompas, outside Zanskar, are situated along this stretch of the Indus River.
^Howard, Neil (2005). "The Development of the Boundary between the State of Jammu & Kashmir and British India, and its Representation on Maps of the Lingti Plain". In Bray, John (ed.). Ladakhi Histories: Local and Regional Perspectives. Brill's Tibetan Studies Library. Vol. 9. Brill Publishers. p. 218. ISBN9789004145511.
