Sharda: a university in the mountains

A short history

Sharada Peeth was a temple and a centre of learning at the same time, and it was the library that made its name. Scholars travelled a long way to use it.

The Sharada script — used across Kashmir and the north-west for centuries, and the ancestor of several later scripts — is named after this place. Kashmir itself was known as Sharada Desh, the country of Sharada. It is rare for a building to name a writing system; it happened here.

The names associated with the site read like a syllabus: Adi Shankara, the eleventh-century saint Ramanuja, the mathematician Vateshvara, the philosopher Utpaladeva, and Kalhana, who wrote the great chronicle of Kashmir.

The temple is in ruins now. Since 1947 the site has sat very close to the Line of Control, and pilgrimage from the Kashmiri Pandit community — for whom this is a site of real significance — has been almost entirely cut off. It is worth knowing that as you stand there, because the quiet is not the same thing as neglect.

Places worth your time

The Sharada Peeth ruins

A walled enclosure and the remains of the temple on a rise above the village. Go late in the afternoon, when the light comes down the valley rather than across it.

The river at Sharda

Wide, fast and very cold. The trout here are the reason a lot of Pakistani travellers come at all.

Nardi and the meadows above

A steep walk up from the village to open pasture, with the valley laid out underneath. Half a day, and almost nobody does it.

The road on to Kel

Sharda is the natural staging post for Kel and Arang Kel further up. The stretch between them is the best of the valley.

Before you go

May to September, as with the rest of the valley. Sharda works best as a night on the way to Kel rather than a day trip. Permits for the upper valley are handled in advance.