When the highland area is very broad and therefore necessitates long transit journeys, genuine pass cities develop at high altitudes, and become the termini of the transmontane trade.  Such is the Leh (11,280 feet or 3439 meters) on the caravan route from Central Asia over the Karakorum Pass down to Kashmir, and such is Srinagar (5252 feet or 1603 meters) in Kashmir.  To their markets come caravans from Chinese Turkestan, laden with carpets and brick tea, and Tibetan merchants from Lhassa, bringing wool from their highland pastures to exchange for the rice and sugar of lowland India.[1237] Leh is conveniently situated about half way between the markets of India and Central Asia.  Therefore it is the terminus for caravans arriving from both regions, and exchange place for products from north and south.  Seldom do caravans from either direction go farther than this point.  Here the merchants rest for a month or two and barter their goods.  Tents of every kind, camels, yaks, mules and horses, coolie transports of various races, men of many languages and many religions, give to this high-laid town a truly cosmopolitan stamp in the summer time when the passes are open.[1238] Kabul, which lies at an altitude of nearly 6000 feet near the head of the Kabul River, is the focus of numerous routes over the Hindu Kush, and dominates all routes converging on the northwest frontier of the Punjab.[1239] It is therefore the military and commercial key to India.  Its narrow winding streets are obstructed by the picturesque kafilas of Oriental merchants, stocked with both Russian goods from the Oxus districts and British goods from India in evidence of its intermediary location.[1240]

Occasionally a very high market develops for purely local use.  The Indian Himalayan province of Kumaon contains the market town of Garbyang, at an elevation of 10,300 feet or about 3000 meters, on the Kali River road leading by the Lipu Lekh Pass (16,780 feet or 5115 meters) over to Tibet.  It has grown up as a trade center for the Dokpa Tibetans, who will not descend below 10,000 feet because their yak and sheep die at a lower altitude.[1241] Farther east in the Sikkim border, Darjeeling (7150 feet or 2180 meters elevation) is center of the British wool trade with Tibet.

Often the exchange point moves nearer the summit of the pass, dividing the journey more equally between the two areas of production.  Here develops the temporary summer market.  High up on the route between Leh and Yarkand is Sasar, a place of unroofed enclosures for the deposit of cotton, silk and other goods left there by the caravans plying back and forth between Leh and Sasar, or Sasar and Yarkand.[1242] Nearly midway on the much frequented trade route between Leh and Lhassa, at a point 15,100 feet (nearly 500 meters) above sea level, just below the Schako Pass, lies Gartok in western Tibet, in summer a busy market surrounded by a city of tents, and the summer residence of the two Chinese viceroys, who occupy the only two