Phursook Bay () is a bay in the

Pangong Tso Pangong Tso or Pangong Lake (; ; hi, text=पैंगोंग झील) is an endorheic lake spanning eastern Ladakh and West Tibet situated at an elevation of . It is long and divided into five sublakes, called ''Pangong Tso'', ''Tso N ...

that is said to have formed the border between

Ladakh Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory which constitutes a part of the larger Kashmir region and has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since 1947. (subscription required) Quote: "Jammu ...

and Tibet's

Rutog County Rutog County (), (in ) is a county in Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The county seat is the new Rutog Town, located some or 700 miles west-northwest of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Rutog County sh ...

during the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was him ...

. 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, where the Chushul River 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 the Pangong Lake that 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 C ...

. 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, 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 Pangong Lake Borders of Ladakh Territorial disputes of China Territorial disputes of India Rutog County Bays of China Bays of India