Laya Gewog is a gewog (village block) of

Gasa District Gasa District or Gasa Dzongkhag ( Dzongkha: མགར་ས་རྫོང་ཁག་; Wylie: ''Mgar-sa rdzong-khag'') is one of the 20 dzongkhags (districts) comprising Bhutan. The capital of Gasa District is Gasa Dzong near Gasa. It is loc ...

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...

. The capital of gewog is the town Laya. The gewog lies entirely within

Jigme Dorji National Park The Jigme Dorji National Park (JDNP), named after the late Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, is the second-largest National Park of Bhutan. It occupies almost the entire Gasa District, as well as the northern areas of Thimphu District, Paro District, Puna ...

and contains several of Bhutan's glaciers. As well as the national language, Dzongkha, many locals speak Layakha. The closure of the Tibetan border following the

Chinese invasion of Tibet Tibet came under the control of People's Republic of China (PRC) after the Government of Tibet signed the Seventeen Point Agreement which the 14th Dalai Lama ratified on 24 October 1951, but later repudiated on the grounds that he rendered his ...

brought several changes to the area. Local people were no longer compelled to work as porters for Tibetan and Bhutanese officials, nobles, or religious figures from

Gasa Dzong Gasa Dzong or Gasa Tashi Tongmön Dzong near Gasa is the administrative center of Gasa Dzongkhag (district) in the northwestern region of Bhutan. The Dzong was built in the 17th century by Tenzin Drukdra the second Druk Desi over the site of a med ...

. Refugees from Tibet arrived with their

yaks The domestic yak (''Bos grunniens''), also known as the Tartary ox, grunting ox or hairy cattle, is a species of long-haired domesticated cattle found throughout the Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent, the Tibetan Plateau, Kachin St ...

, which they sold off at low prices. Taxes on horses and yaks, which had been a disincentive to livestock production were reduced, and yak production increased.

References

Gewogs of Bhutan Gasa District {{Bhutan-geo-stub