Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Kashmir trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Kashmir trivia quiz covers the whole northernmost region of the subcontinent, not just the valley: Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan, Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract, the three rivers that carve it up, K2 and the Karakoram, the Siachen and Biafo glaciers, and the Pir Panjal wall that keeps the monsoon out. On history it runs from Panini's first mention and Kashyapa's lake through the Karkota and Lohara dynasties, Akbar's conquest, the Afghans, Ranjit Singh's Sikhs, the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar that sold the valley to Gulab Singh for 75 lakhs, the 77 percent Muslim princely state that Hari Singh hesitated over in 1947, the wars of 1947, 1965 and 1999, the Line of Control, Operation Meghdoot, the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits and the 2019 revocation of special status. Culture and economy get their turn too: Dal Lake and its houseboats, the Mughal gardens, saffron from Pampore, pashmina, papier-mache, the Amarnath ice lingam, the world's highest rail bridge, and why Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir' was really about Morocco. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Kashmir and its places, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for South Asian geography and history students and quiz nights.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which three countries administer parts of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir?
India, Pakistan and China
India holds about half, Pakistan a third, and China the Aksai Chin and Trans-Karakoram Tract in the north-east.
Q 02Until the mid-19th century, Kashmir meant only the valley between the Great Himalayas and which range?
Pir Panjal
The Pir Panjal also acts as a barrier that stops the Indian monsoon reaching the main valley.
Q 03According to one etymology, Kashmir is named after which Vedic sage, said to have settled people there?
Kashyapa
Kashyapa-mir would mean 'Kashyapa's lake'; a folk etymology instead reads the name as 'land desiccated from water'.
Q 04Which Sanskrit grammarian's 5th-century BC Ashtadhyayi is the first text to name Kashmir?
Panini
He called the people Kashmirikas; the Greeks knew the region as Kasperia and Herodotus as Kaspatyros.
Q 05Which Mughal emperor conquered Kashmir in 1586?
Akbar
Hindu rule had ended in 1339 with the Shah Mir dynasty; the Afghan Durranis took over from the Mughals in 1752.
Q 06Which Sikh ruler's armies took the Kashmir Valley from the Afghans in 1819?
Ranjit Singh
Kashmiris at first welcomed them, but Sikh governors banned the adhan and closed Srinagar's Jamia Masjid.
Q 07For how much did the British sell the Vale of Kashmir to Gulab Singh under the 1846 Treaty of Amritsar?
75 lakhs
He had held aloof in the First Anglo-Sikh War until the battle of Sobraon, then appeared as a 'useful mediator'.
Q 08Which general helped the Raja of Jammu conquer Ladakh and Baltistan in the 1830s and 1840s?
Zorawar Kahluria
Their conquests of Rajouri, Kishtwar, Kargil, Ladakh and Baltistan surrounded the Kashmir Valley before Gulab Singh bought it.
Q 09What percentage of the princely state's population was Muslim in the British census of 1941?
77%
Hindus were 20 percent, Buddhists and Sikhs the rest, yet a small Hindu elite ruled a vast Muslim peasantry.
Q 10Who was the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir at the time of Partition in 1947?
Hari Singh
He hesitated to accede to either dominion; a Pakistani-backed tribal onslaught pushed him to appeal to Mountbatten and accede to India.
Q 11On what condition did Governor-General Mountbatten agree to send Indian troops to Kashmir in 1947?
That the ruler accede to India
A UN-brokered ceasefire came in the last days of 1948, but the plebiscite the UN demanded was never held.
Q 12In which years, besides 1947, did India and Pakistan fight wars over Kashmir?
1965 and 1999
The 1965 war ended in a stalemate and UN ceasefire; the 1999 conflict was fought at Kargil in Ladakh from May to July.
Q 13On what date did India revoke Jammu and Kashmir's autonomy and split it into two union territories?
5 August 2019
Q 21Which peak marks the western end of the Himalayas at Kashmir's boundary?
Nanga Parbat
The upper Indus separates the Himalayas from the Karakoram, the most heavily glaciated place outside the polar regions.
Q 22How tall is K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, in the Karakoram?
8,611 m
The Karakoram holds four eight-thousanders; 8,848 m is Everest.
Q 23How long is the Siachen Glacier, the world's second-longest outside the polar regions?
76 km
The Biafo Glacier at 63 km ranks third; India took control of all of Siachen in Operation Meghdoot in 1984.
A Presidential Order superseded the 1954 order under Article 370, and Ladakh became a separate union territory.
Q 14Which numbered provision of the Indian constitution had given Jammu and Kashmir special status?
Article 370
Its provisions were effectively nullified by the Presidential Order of 5 August 2019.
Q 15How much of disputed Kashmir does India control, per the figures on its Wikipedia page?
101,338 sq km
Pakistan holds 85,846 sq km and China 37,555 sq km; the whole region is roughly 180,000 sq km.
Q 16What was Gilgit-Baltistan formerly called?
The Northern Areas
Its administrative centre is Gilgit and it covers about 72,971 sq km with a population near a million.
Q 17What are the two capital towns of Ladakh?
Leh and Kargil
Ladakh lies between the Kunlun range and the Great Himalayas and is one of the region's least populated parts.
Q 18What is Aksai Chin, the Chinese-controlled part of the region, geographically?
A high-altitude salt desert
Known as the Soda Plain, it reaches 5,000 metres and has no permanent settlements; China built a road across it in 1956-57 that led to the 1962 war.
Q 19India's discovery of a Chinese road through Aksai Chin led to which war?
The Sino-Indian War of 1962
The road linked Xinjiang and western Tibet; China had never accepted the British-era boundary agreements.
Q 20Which three rivers traverse the Kashmir region, dividing it into three valleys?
Indus, Jhelum and Chenab
The upper Jhelum valley is the Vale of Kashmir proper, the Chenab valley is Jammu, and the Indus valley covers Ladakh and Baltistan.
Q 24What was the codename of the 1984 Indian military action that seized control of the Siachen Glacier?
Meghdoot
It pre-empted Pakistan's planned Operation Ababeel by a single day, grabbing the heights of the Saltoro Ridge.
Q 25Which 1972 accord renamed the ceasefire line in Kashmir the 'Line of Control'?
Simla
Both sides pledged to respect it without prejudice to their claims; a separate line divides Indian Kashmir from Aksai Chin.
Q 26In which district of Ladakh was the 1999 war between India and Pakistan fought?
Kargil
India calls it Operation Vijay; it came just months after the Lahore Declaration promised a peaceful solution.
Q 27Which body of water in Srinagar is known as the 'Jewel in the crown of Kashmir'?
Dal Lake
Its 15.5 km shore is lined with Mughal gardens, houseboats and hotels; it is the second-largest lake in Jammu and Kashmir.
Q 28On which river does Srinagar, the summer capital, stand?
Jhelum
The city sits between the Hari Parbat and Shankaracharya hills, and its Shalimar and Nishat gardens date from Mughal times.
Q 29Which two Mughal gardens in Srinagar are the best known?
Shalimar and Nishat
Many were built around Dal Lake under the Mughals after Akbar's conquest.
Q 30Srinagar's tulip garden in the Zabarwan hills is described as the largest in which continent?
Asia
It grows 60 varieties of tulips; the neighbouring botanical garden has 300 kinds of plants.