The population of Ladakh is composed of a variety of distinctive ethnolinguistic hill tribes and social groups, including Buddhist Mongoloid peoples. More than 85 percent of the population is Buddhist, although Muslims form a majority in the district of Kargil and Drass and are a significant minority in the district of Leh.
The state also has small minorities of Sikhs and Christians. The most widely spoken dialects belong to the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, and Ladakhi and Tibetan are the principal languages in Ladakh, except in the Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim communities of Drass and Kargil, where a mix of Urdu, Kashmiri and Balti is spoken.
The state covers an area of 222,236Km² and has a population of 10.1 million people. The main languages spoken by the people are Kashmiri, Dogri, Urdu and Ladakhi, and it is the only Indian state with a Muslim majority.
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