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Map of Kashmir, India / Pakistan


Panorama of Tso Kar lake in Ladakh
Panorama of Tso Kar, a lake about 150 km south of Ladakh's main town of Leh.
Image: McKay Savage

About Kashmir


Jammu and Kashmir (princely state) Flag
The map shows mountainous Kashmir, a region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent and the northernmost geographical area of South Asia.

The region lies within the territory where the Indian tectonic plate meets the Eurasian Plate. The collision between the two plates created the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalaya Mountains. Some of the highest mountains in the world dominate the landscape of Kashmir. Several major mountain ranges of the Himalayas run in a west-northwest to east-southeast direction through the region; the Karakoram Range in Gilgit-Baltistan, and the Ladakh Range, the Zanskar Range, the Great Himalaya Range, and the Pir Panjal Range in India's Jammu and Kashmir state.

The greater region of Kashmir borders the Pakistani provinces of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as North-West Frontier Province) and Punjab in the west, the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan to the north, the disputed area of Aksai Chin (formerly part of Ladakh), the Chinese Autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Tibet in the east, and the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh to the south.

The area was home to several semi-independent Muslim, Buddhist, and Sikh kingdoms until the British came along. After the Anglo-Sikh wars, the British East India Company stripped the culturally different territories from the Sikh Kingdom of Punjab to form a new state and sold it as a whole to Gulab Singh, a local Sikh Maharajah. [1] Under British suzerainty, the formerly politically semi-independent territories of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh became the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, for convenience mostly called just Kashmir. It was a political and administrative construct, the "Sentry State" of the British Indian Empire, bordering the three great powers in the East—the British, the Russian and the Chinese.

The British eventually withdrew from British India in 1947, and the former empire was partitioned into two independent countries - India (mostly Hindu) and Pakistan (primarily Muslim). At the time of the British withdrawal from India, Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of Kashmir, preferred to become independent and to remain neutral between the successor states of India and Pakistan.

Today the northern part of Kashmir is held by Pakistan. The disputed regions are Gilgit-Baltistan in the north and Azad Kashmir, the nominally self-governing territory to the west of the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Jammu and Kashmir is the northernmost part of India; its capitals are Srinagar (in summer) and Jammu (in winter).



Map of Kashmir

Political Map of Kashmir
Political Map of Kashmir

The map shows the greater Kashmir region and surrounding countries with international borders, major cities and towns, main roads, and major airports.

You are free to use above map for educational purposes (fair use). Please refer to the Nations Online Project.


More about Kashmir


In 1834, the Punjab based Sikh Empire invaded and annexed Ladakh, formerly one of the provinces of Tibet, and the region became part of the Indian dominion. After the defeat of the Sikhs in the Anglo-Sikh wars in 1846, the province of Jammu and Kashmir was transferred by the British (in return for payment) to Gulab Singh. It became a part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, the "Sentry State" of the British Indian Empire. British rule of India was developed through a combination of military force and alliances with Indian rulers [2] (mainly by coercive diplomacy). The vassal state was part of the British Empire in India until 1952.




Vale of Kashmir map
Vale of Kashmir topography, with Pir Panjal Range (left) and the Great Himalaya Range (right).
Image: Google Earth

Gilgit-Baltistan, together with the territory of Azad Kashmir, is the dominion of the "Pakistan controlled Kashmir." The territory of Gilgit-Baltistan became a separate administrative unit in 1970 under the name "Northern Areas." But the legal identity and constitutional status Gilgit-Baltistan’s has been disputed ever since the Indo-Pakistani partition in 1947. [3]
Gilgit-Baltistan covers an area of 72,971 km², compared it is about the size of Ireland (the Republic), or about half the size of the US state of Iowa.

Gilgit-Baltistan has a population of about 1.9 million people. Capital city is Gilgit. Urdu is the official language.




Jammu and Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir is India's northernmost state. With an area of 98,340 km², India's controlled portion of Kashmir is about the size of Iceland. Kashmir (the princely state) was originally the size of Great Britain (island), or slightly smaller than Minnesota.

Approximately 14 million people (est. 2018) live in India's northernmost state which consists of four regions; the hilly Jammu Division in the southwest, home to Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Kashmir Valley (Vale of Kashmir), the valley situated at an average elevation of 1,000 m, is surrounded by the Pir Panjal Range and the Great Himalaya Range. Within the valley lies Srinagar, the state's largest city and its summer capital. The Kashmir Valley has a predominantly Muslim population.
The mountainous Ladakh; its population is split roughly in half between the districts of Leh and Kargil. About 77% of the citizens of Kargil is Muslim, while Leh's population is 66% Buddhist. In the northeastern corner of the state is the Siachen Glacier, an inhospitable area where nobody really lives.

Official languages are Urdu, Kashmiri, and Dogri, an Indo-Aryan language.


The map shows the location of following cities and towns in Northern India:

Amritsar, Baramulla, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Jammu, Kargil, Leh, Ludhiana, Manali, Delhi, Shimla, and Srinagar.

Map shows the location of following cities and towns in Northern Pakistan: 

Abbottabad, Dera Ismail Khan, Faisalabad, Gilgit, Gujranwala, Islamabad, Lahore, Muzaffarabad, Peshawar, Sahiwal, Skardu, and Wagah (border town between Pakistan and India on the Grand Trunk Road between Amritsar, Punjab, India, and Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan).
 

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Weather Conditions Jammu and Kashmir:

JAMMU AND KASHMIR WEATHER

 

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States of India:
Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal
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