Zangskar, or Zahar as it’s known in the area, is a tehsil (administrative division) in the Indian territory of Ladakh’s Kargil district. The city of Padum serves as the administrative hub (former capital of Zanskar). For a brief time, the regions of Zanskar and Ladakh to the west were ruled by the Guge dynasty in Western Tibet. Around 250 kilometres south of Kargil town, on NH301, is Zanskar.

Separating the Zanskar valley in Ladakh from the Indus valley at Leh is the Zanskar Range, a mountain range in the union territory of Ladakh. In terms of geology, the Zanskar Range is included in the Tethys Himalaya, a synclinorium produced by severely folded and imbricated, poorly metamorphosed sedimentary sequence that spans roughly 100 km in width. The Zanskar Range rises to an average altitude of around 6,000 metres (19,700 ft). Rupshu is the name given to the area in the east. In the year 2020, Zanskar was home to over 20,000 people. Zanskar has been proposed as a potential district.