Phursook Bay () is a bay in the

Pangong Tso Pangong Tso or Pangong Lake (; zh, s=班公错, p=Bān gōng cuò; ) is an endorheic lake spanning eastern Ladakh and Ngari Prefecture, West Tibet situated at an elevation of . It is long and divided into five sublakes, called ''Pangong Tso' ...

that is said to have formed the border between

Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory and constitutes an eastern portion of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a Kashmir#Kashmir dispute, dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 and India an ...

and Tibet's

Rutog County Rutog County (, zh, s=日土县) is a Counties of China, county in Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. The county seat is the new Rutog Town, located some or 700 miles west-northwest of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Rutog Co ...

during the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

. The present day

Line of Actual Control The Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the context of the Sino-Indian border dispute, is a notional demarcation lineAnanth KrishnanLine of Actual Control , India-China: the line of actual contest, 13 June 2020: "In contrast, the alignment of ...

between China and India runs near the same location and remains fiercely contested.

Geography

The Phursook Bay was described by the British surveyor H. H. Godwin-Austen in 1867 in his notes on the Pangong Lake district. Traversing the southern shore of the lake, he arrived at the plain of

Thakung Phursook Bay () is a bay in the Pangong Tso that is said to have formed the border between Ladakh and Tibet's Rutog County during the British Raj. The present day Line of Actual Control between China and India runs near the same location and rem ...

, where the

Chushul River Chushul is a village in the Leh district of Ladakh, India. It is located in the Durbuk tehsil, in the area known as "Chushul Valley", south of the Pangong Lake and west of the Spanggur Lake. The Line of Actual Control with China runs about 5 m ...

joins the lake, found a bay at its southeastern corner, then a low spur abutting on the lake and then another large bay. It is called Phursook and is said to form the boundary between the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir and the district of

Rudok Rudok, also spelt Rutok and Rutog, more properly Rudok Dzong (), is a town that served as the historical capital of the Rudok area in Western Tibet on the frontier with Ladakh. In the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, it is described as being "pict ...

. His description continued: Henry Strachey had traversed the same region earlier in 1847 as a boundary commissioner for Kashmir. : "A very good idea of its alignment was derived by Strachey and Cunningham in 1846-1848" He drew the frontier between Kashmir and Rudok at the same location. After crossing the lake at this location, his frontier line hugged the northern shore of the lake and ran east until the

Khurnak Plain The Khurnak Fort () is a ruined fort on the northern shore of Pangong Lake, which spans eastern Ladakh in India and Rutog County in the Tibet region of China. The area of the Khurnak Fort is disputed by India and China, and has been under Chines ...

. The narrow channel at the

was included entirely within Tibet. (Maps 1 and 2)

Historical maps

File:1851 map of Pangong Lake by Strachey.jpg, Map1: Boundary between Kashmir and Rudok shown as a faint orange colour wash in the map of Henry Strachey (1851) File:Pangong-Tso-from-Edward-Weller-map-1863.jpg, Map 2: The frontier depicted in a map by Edward Weller (1863) File:Pangong-and-Spanggur-US-Army-map-1954.jpg, Map 3: China-India border after the Kashmir Survey (

AMS AMS or Ams may refer to: Organizations Companies * Alenia Marconi Systems * American Management Systems * AMS (Advanced Music Systems) * ams AG, semiconductor manufacturer * AMS Pictures * Auxiliary Medical Services Educational institutions ...

, 1954) File:Ladakh LAC Landmarks (cropped).jpg, Map 4: The Line of Actual Control between China and India ( DMA, 1992)

Notes

References

Bibliography

* {{citation , last=Godwin-Austen , first=H. H. , title=Notes on the Pangong Lake District of Ladakh, from a Journal made during a Survey in 1863 , journal=The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1lwMAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA351 , year=1867 , volume=37 , publisher=J. Murray , location=London , pages=343–363 , doi=10.2307/1798534 , jstor=1798534 , ref={{sfnref, Godwin-Austen, Notes on the Pangong Lake District, 1867, url-access=subscription Pangong Lake Borders of Ladakh Territorial disputes of China Territorial disputes of India Rutog County Bays of China Bays of India