town, western Tibet Autonomous Region, western China. It is located at an elevation of 14,630 feet (4,460 metres) at the foot of the Kailas Range (Gangdisi Shan) on the Gar River, which is one of the headwaters of the Indus River (in Tibet Sindhu, or Yindu, River). Gartok is an important route centre on the main road through the southern Tibetan region from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to the Kashmir region. Historically, Gartok was an important trade centre for traveling merchants from India and Nepal, who attended the great fairs held there.
In the 18th century Gartok was a major military garrison on the frontier of the then-independent kingdom of Ladakh in the Kashmir region. Gartok was formally opened to foreign trade following the Lhasa Treaty (between the United Kingdom and Tibet) of 1904. The ruins of ancient fortifications still survive, but in the 1930s there was no town there, merely the residence of the Tibetan governor and a small temple. After the Chinese took control of Tibet in 1959, the area became the scene of considerable road building to provision the Ladakh border area to the south and west. The local administrative centre later moved to a new town northwest at Gar (also called Shiquanhe), which was first constructed in the 1960s. Pop. (latest est.) fewer than 10,000.
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