After taking western Tibet up to Taklakot, the Dogra army was destroyed in the winter fighting at To-yo, where Zorawar Singh was killed.
01Over the passes
Between 1834 and 1840 Zorawar Singh had brought Ladakh and Baltistan under the Dogra house of Jammu, then a feudatory of the Sikh empire at Lahore. In May 1841 he marched east from Leh with some five to six thousand men along the upper Indus. Rudok, Gartok and Taklakot fell one after another. The country of Kailash and Mansarovar, the holiest ground of the Himalaya, came under a Dogra garrison for the first time.
02Winter at To-yo
Lhasa sent a large army. Zorawar Singh chose to hold his gains through the winter at nearly 4,500 metres instead of falling back. Snow closed the passes behind him, supplies failed and his men, many of them from the plains, suffered terribly from cold. In December 1841 the Tibetans attacked near To-yo. Zorawar Singh was killed in the fighting and his army broke up; few came home. A Tibetan counter-thrust into Ladakh was beaten off in 1842, and the Treaty of Chushul that September restored the old border.
Zorawar Singh’s campaigns fixed Ladakh within the Jammu state, and so within India; the Indian Army honours him as one of its great mountain generals.