I occasionally wonder if readers who haven’t written a book understand how many people, and how many processes, are involved in its production. All they see is the author’s name, and they may not think beyond that to the editors, designers and printers who have transformed the author’s vision into the volume they see before them. Most of us opt for an established publishing firm with its ready infrastructure; and I for one would have quailed at the thought of undertaking self-publication. Not so our Ahtushi! She has overseen the production process from the time she completed her text and her selection of photos, to the appearance of the book we have before us. The editors, designers, printers have of course made their essential contributions, but she has always had the last word. Leave aside the book’s content, I’m in awe simply of her achievement of getting the book out.

As for the book’s content, Ahtushi hasn’t been alone in her relentless pursuit of Ladakh’s rock-mounted picture-galleries. There had been several passing observations of them by travelers in the earlier part of the C20, but it was only in the 1990s that they captured the scholarly imagination of a few students of Ladakh; and by the time Ahtushi embarked on her work, she had access to a comprehensive database created by Indian and foreign researchers.

None of this detracts in the slightest from Ahtushi’s singular achievement. Her role has been to build on the work of the researchers who have gone before her, trekking to sites all over Ladakh and exercising her quite remarkable talent as a photographer, in order to bring this amazing corpus of art before a wider public. It’s not for me to give you a blow-by-blow account of what the book is all about. It suffices to say that both photos and text reveal the remains of long-forgotten cultures whose other attributes have completely faded from human memory. What we can infer about these presumed hunter-gatherer societies, however, is that their impulse to creativity was so strong that it drove them to use, for their artistic expression, the only medium they had – the unforgiving medium of rock. To scholars of Ladakh, or art historians, or archaeologists, or pre-historians, it comes as a revelation.

Thank you Ahtushi, for all your hard work which, as you yourself tell us in the book, was ‘challenging, gripping and adventurous but, above all, deeply rewarding’. Thank you for the generosity that has given readers access, via a QR code, to your website with its treasury of photos beyond those which could be included for publication. And thank you most of all for the steadfast vision that has guided you through all the ups and downs of your research, and has now taken shape in this marvellous book.