The place where Buddha attained face

As you know, every big mountain, being literally the navel of the Earth, eventually accumulates a lot of myths and legends, and becomes the axis of the foundation and the fantastic, yet very real stories. The perturbation vertical space bizarre twists of fate and age. For myths and legends of the local population is responsible, the heroes byley – different kinds of adventurers, mountaineers and other violent “surfers”.

It would be interesting to make something like a historical chronicle, for example, for each eight-, but it does take a lot for them to wander:) On Everest, I’ve tried to write , now part of Nanga Parbat, the more that this mountain will give good odds that the same Everest , and Kashmir – the place is not easy.

1. Nanga Parbat. Painting by Nicholas Roerich

Brief introduction: Nanga Parbat – the first ever eight-to which people have tried to ascend, the first-ever eight-, conquered by man alone. Prior to Everest climbing became popular in the environment, Nanga Parbat kept the championship in the number of dead climbers.

This mountain has witnessed the birth and development of Buddhism in the region, not far from it came the first image of the Buddha. Her foot was held Alexander of Macedon, the Muslim conquerors (ie, Tamerlane and his descendant Babur founded the Mughal dynasty), Sikh invaders. Nanga Parbat knows first hand what a big game of British and Russian empires. Roerich painted the mountain. In the end, this mountain long before the whole of Europe saw the swastika neinduistskuyu – at the top in the early 1930s, tried to climb the Nazis.

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Once part of Afghanistan, part of the Pamirs, the whole of northern Pakistani-administered Kashmir and Ladakh were Buddhist. About Ladakh is known to many, but here’s what Baltistan (Gilgit Baltistan, now known as the northern part of Kashmir) had a different name – Tibet-i-Khurd, little is known. Translates it as a Small Tibet, the vast majority of people here and now speaks the language of the Baltic States – one of the western dialect of Tibetan language, but it is Muslim.

A little farther west, in the valleys of Dir and Swat in the XX century, excavated six years of Buddhist temples and villages of the world’s greatest Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci (incidentally, the teacher Michelle Pesselya, which show the way to go in Pesselya forbidden kingdom Mustang). Tucci found in Swat as many Buddhist antiquities, that the excavation could not stop until now.

However, once from 2007 to 2009 he held down the valley of the Taliban, a Buddhist heritage was dealt a severe blow. The Taliban began destroying bodrenko “idols”, as in his time destroyed Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. This is despite the fact that none of the Muslim invaders of the early period up to Tamerlane’s finger to these monuments were not touched. Yes, and “idols” are in fact older than Islam in a couple of hundred years.

In 326 BC through the Khyber Pass connecting Afghanistan with Pakistan today, in the kingdom of Gandhara Alexander of Macedon invaded. He went with his army across Kashmir, crossed the Indus and Jhelum and even went to the Ganges.

2. Jhelum River (also known as Gidaspov). Here Macedonian army defeated the Indians along the river lay our way to Nanga Parbat