Let me give away his name. Ghulam Rassul Galwan it is. Read on to know how and why the valley got its name. It is rare for a 14-year-old boy to traverse through treacherous mountains but if you are born in Leh it becomes second nature.

Ghulam Rassul Galwan was so poor that he had to travel miles in snow-capped mountains to feed himself and his mother. Life in the mountains is never easy and even so during the time he lived. He was born in 1878 and died in 1925.

People in the mountains become porters and pony men for explorers, just as the present day sherpas who help explorers scale mountain peaks in Nepal. Galwan was just 12 when he started helping British explorers by carrying their load.

In one of the expeditions in 1892, Galwan who was assisting Dunmore Murray, a well-known explorer did something that helped etch his name in history. As the team was moving, they came against huge mountains that seemed impossible to pass. Galwan, then 14 years of age stopped the party and went in search of an alternate route and found a pass through the mountains and gorges. Dunmore was so happy that he named the passage as ‘Galwan nullah’.

What is interesting is the fact that most discoveries are named after foreigners but Dunmore named the passage after an Indian boy. Since then, the area is called Galwan Valley.

The love affair with mountains remained with Galwan till his early death in 1925, he was just 47. In his lifetime he assisted several explorers, zoologists and biologists and noted down interesting anecdotes which resulted in a book ‘Servant of Sahibs’ published in 1923, two years before his death.

He kept in touch with explorers and shared his drafts with them and finally the book was published. He is the first person from Leh region to have written a book in English.

The Galwan Valley has always remained the flashpoint in Indo-China fights and even his family members were affected in 1959 and 62 skirmishes.