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Rang

Prayer flags over a high desert

Leh

Strings of five-coloured prayer flags and white stupas stand out against the brown mountains of Ladakh.

View of Leh, Ladakh, India.
Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Leh is prayer-flag blue

Leh is the main town of Ladakh, about 3,500 metres up in the Himalaya. The land is a cold desert of brown and grey rock, with green only along the streams. Colour comes from faith. Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags are strung across passes, bridges and rooftops in a fixed order: blue, white, red, green and yellow. They are often explained as sky, air, fire, water and earth. Stupas, the dome-shaped shrines also called chortens, are whitewashed each year. Monks and nuns wear maroon. Above the old town stands Leh Palace, a nine-storey building of stone, mud brick and timber from the 17th century, the same colour as the hill it sits on.

Prayer-flag blue#2F6DB5Stupa white#F3F1EAMonk maroon#7B2233Mountain brown#9A8468Flag yellow#F0C330

Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.

About this page

Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Leh" on Wikipedia. If you know Leh and we have it wrong, tell us.

More colour cities

All colour cities
🇮🇳 The Blue CityJodhpurOld-city houses washed in blue crowd the foot of Mehrangarh Fort, on the edge of the Thar Desert.🇮🇳 The Pink CityJaipurThe walled city wears a dusty terracotta pink, first painted on for a royal visit in 1876 and kept ever since.🇮🇳 The White CityUdaipurWhite palaces and whitewashed houses stand around lakes in the Aravalli hills of southern Rajasthan.🇮🇳 The Golden CityJaisalmerA fort and town built of yellow sandstone that glows like honey at sunset, deep in the Thar Desert.🇮🇳 City of saffron and lightVaranasiSaffron robes, marigold garlands and oil lamps colour the river steps of one of the oldest living cities.🇮🇳 Town of Holi coloursVrindavanFor Holi the temple town of Krishna's childhood fills with clouds of pink, yellow and green powder.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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