To the Tibetan border
Bushahr held the whole of the upper Sutlej, from the foothills at Rampur through the Kinnaur valleys to the Tibetan frontier — a territory that spans the Hindu hills, the Buddhist high valleys and the trans-Himalayan desert, and whose people include communities practising both religions together.
The Bhimakali temple at Sarahan, built in a slate-and-timber tower construction with a pagoda roof, is the state's principal shrine and among the finest examples of Himalayan wooden architecture. The Lavi fair at Rampur, held each November, was the great exchange point for Tibetan wool, borax and salt against Indian grain and cloth, and it is still held.
After 1948
Bushahr entered British protection after the Gorkha war and acceded to India in 1948. The closure of the Tibetan border after 1962 ended the trade that had sustained Kinnaur for centuries, and the region was reoriented toward horticulture — the apple orchards of the Sutlej valley date substantially from that reorientation.
Kinnaur remained closed to outsiders until 1989 as a restricted border area.
Further reading
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Nugteren, Albertina. Belief, Bounty, and Beauty: Rituals Around Sacred Trees in India. Brill, 2005
- Ray, Himanshu Prabha. The Winds of Change: Buddhism and the Maritime Links of Early South Asia. Oxford University Press, 1994
- Samuel, Geoffrey. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Cambridge University Press, 2008
- Sax, William S. Mountain Goddess: Gender and Politics in a Himalayan Pilgrimage. Oxford University Press, 1991
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.