Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c13.55

v2.c13.55

One of the traditional routes and forms of communication that continued well into the 20^th century with very little change in this period was the old trans-Karakoram trade between Punjab and the Ladakh region of India on the one hand and southern Xinjiang on the other. Although the difficulties of this route, which involved crossing extremely high mountain passes, limited the volume of this trade, it nevertheless persisted and played an important role in the local economies on both sides. However, in the first half of the 20^th century, various factors like the competition from mass-produced goods from Russia,