Tangtse[2] or Drangtse[3][a] (Tibetan: བྲང་རྩེ, Wylie: brang rtse, THL: drang tsé)[11][12] is a village in the Leh district of Ladakh, India.

During the Jammu and Kashmir princely rule, Tangtse was the headquarters of an ilaqa (subdistrict), whose territory included the Pangong Lake area, the Chang Chenmo Valley and the Aksai Chin plateau.

The two faults sandwich the Pangong Range, at the northern periphery of which lies the village of Tangtse.

[15][16][17] Even though the Ladakhis had no knowledge of the erstwhile "Pangong River" (it having predated the birth of humanity), they preserve a myth that the waters flowing into the Mughlib stream, from a "scanty spring at Wangtong", represent the filtered waters of the Pangong Lake.

[11] Historian Janet Rizvi has also acknowledged that the trade route between Turkestan and Tibet passed through Ladakh.

[21][22] The following year, Tibet sent formidable reinforcements (estimated at 5,000 troops along with several seasoned commanders) and the Tibetans returned.

After a three-year siege, they requested assistance from the Mughal forces in Kashmir, who fought off the Tibetans and chased them to the Pangong area.

After the defeat of the Zorawar Singh's forces in West Tibet, the Tibetans were incited by Ladakhi rebels, who wanted to overthrow the Dogras ensconced in Ladakh.

[27] The Tibetan accounts say that they established a defence post at "Lung-wu" (Long Yogma),[28] which was described as a place between "Rudok and the Pangong Lake".

[29][30][d] The Ladakhi rebels had declared their minor king Jigmet Senge Namgyal as an independent ruler.

After the arrival of reinforcements led by Dewan Hari Chand and Wazir Ratanu, the Dogras challenged the Tibetan encampments at Tangtse and the Long Yogma valley.

During the Dogra rule, Tankse was the headquarters of a subdistrict (a kardari, often called an ilaqa), which controlled access to the Chang Chenmo Valley.

[34] With the eruption of the Sino-Indian border dispute in the late 1950s, the Indian government had ample documents from the time of Dogra administration to demonstrate that the Chang Chenmo Valley and the Aksai Chin plateau belonged to Ladakh.

The revenue maps showed the large stretches of uninhabited territories, which are now occupied by China, as part of the Tankse ilaqa.

[36] Tangtse is a well-known and important site of Tocharian, Sogdian, Śārāda and Arabic inscriptions.