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Leh Old Town Conservation Project - Ladakh, Indian Himalayas
by André Alexander and Andreas Catanese
1. Introduction
Ladakh is a semi-autonomous region in the Indian Himalayas. For centuries an important crossroads of Central Asian caravan trade, Ladakh’s culture, language and religion have mainly come from Tibet. Ladakh’s capital, Leh, preserves monuments from the 15th and 16th centuries, but was extended to become the permanent royal capital only in the early 17th century. The Tibetan cultural regions across the Himalayas are famous for their large monastic settlements, but they have produced comparatively few cities. Most of these have changed beyond recognition as a result of the very rapid advent of modernization in the region since the 1950s. Political events, such as the Chinese occupation of Tibet have further diminished Tibet’s urban heritage. Therefore Leh, the former royal and presently administrative capital of Ladakh, is a very important example of historic Tibetan urban architecture. Tibet Heritage Fund (THF) is an international NGO that was founded in Lhasa in 1996 with the aim to preserve Tibet’s heritage, particularly its architectural and urban heritage. In 2003 a THF team consisting of André Alexander and Ms. Lharitso came to Leh after hearing about the decline of the old town. The team carried out a rough survey of the old town, creating an inventory of 178 historic buildings, collecting their names, owners and photographing each building. THF then decided to begin an urban conservation program modelled on the Lhasa Old Town Conservation project (1996-2000). Lhasa and Leh share not only a common architectural heritage, but the historic districts of both faced some of the same problems. Both had infrastructure deficits, such as lack of piped water and drainage facilities, and both had been deserted by many of the original owners – in Lhasa for political reasons, while in Leh the wealthier families simply moved to the leafy green suburbs of the town. Modern Leh is a city of some 35,000 inhabitants. The population almost triples in size during the summer tourist season, when people from all over India come here looking for work. To protect the rural Ladakhis from economic competition that they are not prepared for, the government has made impossible for outsiders to acquire land, and even to open a businesses or to work requires permits and often a Ladakhi partner. Thus, Ladakhis are benefiting more from tourism than their cousins in Lhasa. However, 15,000 tourists wanting regular showers and flush toilets and producing mountains of garbage (water bottles, food wrappings, toilet paper etc.) are putting a severe strain on Ladakh’s fragile economy. Old Leh is dominated by the former royal palace, a nine-story stone structure erected around 1600 in the Tibetan style made famous by the slightly later Potala Palace in Lhasa. The old town, consisting of two hundred stone, mud and timber houses sandwiched between thick rammed earth walls, is located on the slope below the palace, still accessed by a number of ancient stupa gateways.
2. THF’s Intervention Strategy
In 2004 the THF team returned to Leh to carry out more surveys. The findings revealed that, for example, over 55% of the historic building stock was in bad or poor condition, and that average monthly household income of the residents of old Leh was little more than 100 US$. The social data obtained during the surveys strongly suggested intervention to improve people’s livelihood and living conditions. This was matched by a generally expressed desire by many community members to reverse the decline of the old town. Drainage is a problem, there are only a handful of open channels that are frequently blocked (or frozen). Heavy rainfalls or a neighbour’s washing day can trigger the flooding of one’s basement. Houses in the old town generally have no running water, residents rely on a handful of public taps. The toilets are all of the standard Himalayan composting type. Technically, some aspects of improving conditions in the old town do present a challenge; especially building a drainage system into the sheer rock for a town which has nearly six months of sub-zero temperature winters. Mostly, however, the technical problems can be solved with locally-available technologies and materials. The houses are built in Tibetan fashion with sun-dried mud bricks around a timber frame on stone foundations. Local clays and soils are traditionally used ingeniously to create waterproof roof layers and dust-free plastered interior surfaces. The task would be to successfully identify and use the best of the traditional skills, which have slid into obscurity since the advent of subsidized cement and steel, and blend them with adequate modern technologies where necessary. THF opted for an integrated approach, developed for the Lhasa Old City Conservation Program. In Leh, this consisted of five components: - Working together with the local administration to create a planning framework (a new Masterplan for Leh) and to improve the infrastructure. THF (and most local community members) expect government action to take long time and are slow to come. From early on, all local government departments expressed their support for our activities, and made available official maps and surveys. In 2006, THF and the local government, the Ladakh Autonomous Hill development Council (LAHDC) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to work together to preserve historic Leh. - THF designed a model to offer 50% cofinancing for adequate rehabilitation of homes, on the condition that indigenous labour and indigenous skills are mainly used. Based on comparable work in Lhasa, we also offered improvements such as bathrooms with drains, bringing more light into the often dark houses (built when glass was not known or available), improving the composting pits of the traditional latrines and increasing the efficiency of traditional clay mixes based on our experience and the skills of the best traditional craftsmen. Several house owners immediately took up the offer, so that presently there is a waiting list as THF’s finances only allow for a limited number of buildings to be upgraded each year. - Starting a crafts revival, training (and employment) program. THF spent several weeks identifying Ladakhi craftsmen. The THF team travelled to surrounding villages and interviewed many craftsmen, and finally hired a small group consisting of two masons, Jamyang Tarchin and Sonam Dorje, and two carpenters, Tsering Dorje and Tsering Puntsok. This became the first project in Leh and vicinity to work again with Ladakhi craftsmen. Three years later all except one are still working for the old town project. For training and labour, preferential hiring is given to poor residents of Leh. This is aimed to give employment to those inhabitants of the old town who do not own land and have little education, and therefore giving them an economic perspective. - Choosing a model restoration object: THF next worked with this core group of artisans to restore a communally-owned shrine, the 17th century Guru Lhakhang, to demonstrate the practicalities and desirability of restoring Leh’s historic building stock. After conducting several community-meetings, a model rehabilitation area was next chosen, the Stagopilok residential lane, where housing and infrastructure was to be upgraded. - Registering a local NGO, the Leh Old Town Initiative. This consists of local experts and community representatives, to whom the project can be handed over in the future. Three years later the project can look back on the successful rehabilitation of several clusters of buildings and monuments in old Leh. This work has received a 2006 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Award, and a Dubai Best Practice Award from UN Habitat.
From left to right: 1. View of the old town (A. Alexander, 2006), 2. Map of Leh (J&K government 1990, updated by THF 2003-2007 Alexander/MRTZ/Jäkle/Wozniak/Klein) and 3. Hor Yarkandi House. A mid-20th century house located on Stagopilok alley, rehabilitated in 2006 with 50% cofinancing by the owner. Intervention included structural repairs, reconstruction of collapsed top floor and improvement of bathroom and drainage facilities. From left: ground floor plan showing composition vault and store rooms (THF), section before project (THF), mason Hanupa Dorje at work (THF, 8.2006), north elevation. (André Alexander, 9.2006)
3. Conservation of historic architectural structures
Ladakhi temples and residential buildings share the same basic architecture. An internal timber frame supports flat, mudcovered roofs. Walls are built from rubble stone and sun-dried mud bricks. Many Ladakhis say that rainfall in the region has substantially increased in recent years, perhaps a result of global warming. In any case most house owners complain of leaking roofs. Corrugated iron sheets as roofing material has therefore become very popular in both old and new Leh. Our team sees this as a wrong approach to both traditional and modern architecture. In the high altitude deserts of Ladakh where only few materials are available for building houses, the skills of the craftsmen and the knowledge which lasts over centuries created a high sophisticated way to utilize those materials. The changing weather conditions and the changing needs of the people represent serious challenges. The problems can be solved through proper reutilization of the materials and the way they are used. But in most of the cases the house owners take a questionable approach. Cheap materials are available on the market and no skills are needed to fix them onto the leaking roofs. In our project the traditional materials are reused and if necessary their quality is improved. Even after three years and after several heavy rainfalls the roofs we repaired are still waterproof. This is because of the waterproof “markalak” layer that we apply. “Markalak”, meaning “oily mud”, is a clay which is available almost cost-free in the areas around Leh. It is the traditional material used to waterproof the Ladakhi roofs. In the past a thin layer on a mud roof was enough to ensure dry living rooms. Today its thickness must be improved, therefore we have added a 5 centimeter-thick layer of it in between the mud. In case of rain, the clay will absorb the initial humidity and then swell, creating a solid layer that is impermeable. During THF’s first year in Ladakh, we have collected samples of different soil qualities used in construction. These included the famous soil of Shey, used to make the best quality of mud bricks, yellow soil (sersa) of Stakmo (near Tiktse), the tap-sa soil used to build traditional stoves but also for flooring and markalak. We had these samples analysed thanks to the kind help of Prof. Achim Bräuning of the University of Stuttgart, and compared the results with samples from Tibet. In Tibet, a fine grained limestone (micrite) is used to waterproof roofs, known in Tibetan as arga. Arga is rare in Ladakh, and we only found one sample at Mangyu.
The analysis showed that markalak is indeed 80% pure clay with some silt but zero sand, while all the other soil samples, including the arga from Tibet, contain sand, silt and a little bit of clay (see figure 1). It is interesting to note that the quality of the Shey soil appears to be related to the high silt content.
Figure 1. Analysis of Ladakhi and Tibetan soil samples, courtesy A. Bräuning, Stuttgart
The order of layers in an improved Ladakhi roof starts with a ceiling of wooden beams, rafters and willow-stick joists, on which we place woven straw mats to prevent dust from falling through the joists. Next comes a layer of Ladakhi “yagtses” grass, a traditional stop-gap layer: if water makes it thus far, the grass can absorb water several times its volume. The grass also serves to insulate the roof. Next comes a layer of rough soil, and then the layer of “markalak” clay. The final layer of soil on the roof is applied wet, and its mix can include straw, and even the dung of cows, donkeys or horses to increase its solidness as people often walk on the flat roofs. They are used for gathering and for performing certain household chores.
The parapets are being improved by capping them with finely-cut slate stone, a method commonly used in Tibet and introduced to Leh by THF. When necessary modern material can be used, even if their utilization is concentrated only in the most endangered spot of the roofs where due to the changing climate the traditional materials lack in perfection. Modern materials are, when possible, hidden by layers of plaster or mud so that the original design is not altered. Locally available bitumen (tar paper) can be used to protect the inner edges of the parapets against possible leaks. The traditional water spouts can be improved by fitting them with stainless tin pans in the crucial area between the wooden spout and the mud of the roof. It is helpful to use cement to paste the wooden spout solidly onto the roof, in the form of a cement pan in which the spout lies. Improvements in the interior consist of adding more or larger windows, of waterproofing surfaces which might come into contact with water (kitchen, bathrooms), and generally creating more durable and dust-free surfaces. One example is the Hor Yarkandi house, a residential building erected a hundred years ago by a trader from Yarkand in China. Here we added apricot juice to the floor mix in some of the rooms, and cow dung in others. The results were more durable and dustfree surfaces of the floors. One room was designed as bathroom and cemented, and left with holes for piping to fit a tank on the roof for showers, and fitted with piping connected to the street drain. Composting vault of the toilet was concreted in the inside, to prevent seepage of urine into the foundations, a very common problem in Tibet and Ladakh. The old Sankar Labrang house in the Manekhang area is an example of adaptive re-use of a historic building. Erected possibly several hundred years ago around a group of five stone-carved Buddha-s slightly smaller than life-size, the upper floor served as residence of the caretaker monk of the White Maitreya Temple nearby. The mother monastery, Sankar Gonpa near Leh, abandoned the house two decades ago when they asked the Goba family to service the temple instead.  Image 8. Sankar Labrang, now the Leh Heritage House(A. Alexander 2006)
The monastery was planning to eventually demolish the house and to construct modern shops there. THF successfully persuaded the monastery to keep the house, and offered to restore it in return for a nominal and limited lease. After conversion, it became the Leh Heritage House, a gallery showing alternately modern art and photography and an exhibition about historic Leh. Maps of the old town and information about the conservation project and about old Leh (and Italian Espresso) are also available. The conversion plans included the gutting of the upper floor, which was split into several small rooms, so that a single large exhibition room was created. The flooring and roofing was designed to accommodate many visitors with trampling feet, so slate stone was laid on the floors and roof. The paving has so far withstood several dancing parties with Ladakhi, Bollywood and Western music, some of it played live.
4. Conservation of Buddhist wall-paintings Wall-paintings are an important component of Tibetan Buddhist heritage. The interior walls of temple halls, monastic assembly halls and shrines would be painted in their entirety. Traditionally, mineral pigments with animal glue as binder would be applied on a preparation of chalk on dry mud plaster. In Ladakh, several temples still preserve early murals executed in the tradition of the now-lost Buddhist civilization of Kashmir, while later murals were done in the traditional styles of Western and Central Tibet. Compared to Tibet, where many historic monasteries and their paintings were damaged during the Cultural Revolution, the small territory of Ladakh preserves an astounding number of early paintings. But no professional local mural restorers have existed prior to the THF project. Soon after setting up its office in the old Lakruk House just below the Leh Palace in 2005, THF received requests for assistance from numerous monastic establishments, and we saw numerous temples whose ancient murals were damaged by leaking roofs, structural faults or badly-executed restoration. Sensing the need for local experts in mural conservation, THF set up its conservation training program in the Spring of the same year. Initially two young Ladakhis, Yangchen Dolma and Skarma Lotos, were trained in situ by international restorers. This program has now become institutionalized thanks to the cooperation between THF and the Conservation Department of the Erfurt University of Applied Sciences. After two years of training in the field, the two Ladakhi students travelled to Erfurt in Germany to receive further training in the laboratories of the University. They also participated in a conservation project in a local museum. Back in Leh, the caretaker of the Red Maitreya temple, the venerable Ngawang Tsering, requested THF to carry out routine roof repairs to prevent rain leaks from soiling the 15th century three-storey image of Maitreya, the Future Buddha. During the work, André Alexander discovered two walls with original wallpaintings hidden between a coat of whitewash applied in the late 1950s. The Red Maitreya temple is said to have been founded by the Ladakhi king Dragspa Bumdey, who reigned sometime during the first half of the 15th century. If the wall-paintings were indeed from that time, they would be the oldest in Leh. Presently, Romanian restorer Anca Nicolaescu and German conservation students from Erfurt are working on these paintings, doing research, recovering and conservation. Initial analysis of the iconography indicated that the paintings are indeed from the founding period but confirmation depends on whether an inscription, located next to a painted portrait of the founder, can be deciphered. At present, it is illegible but hope rests on special equipment offered by Erfurt University. It is planned in the near future to publish further technical reports on some of these projects in this magazine.
From left to right:
Image 9. Red Maitreya Temple, south facade elevation (THF/Lopes); Image 10. Red Maitreya Temple (A. Catanese, 2007); Image 11. “Local” restoration of wall-paintings seen in Alchi Choskhor, Ladakh (A. Alexander, 2006) and Image 12. The THF team 2007 with local artisans, foreign experts and volunteers (A. Alexander).
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About the authors:
André Alexander
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