Claude Arpi
A recent visit to the border areas of the Central Sector of the Indo-Tibet boundary was an eye-opener. The first thing that I witnessed was the considerable efforts that have been made by the Central government (through the Border Road Organisation of the Indian Army) to connect to ‘the world’ in these remote locations.
The accounts of travellers, yogis (particularly Swami Pranavanada in the 1930s), yatris (to Kailash Mountain), or Indian officials posted in Gartok in western Tibet always struck me for the description of the harsh terrain near the tri-junction of India, Tibet, and Nepal; till recently, the journey was indeed extremely perilous.
To give an example, a few years ago, it took up to a 27-day walk for a yatri to travel from Darchula to Lipulekh and later come back (in Tibet, they were taken by buses to the Kailash base camp). Today the road reaches a few hundred metres from the top of Lipulekh, the border pass separating Kumaon (near the trijunction with Tibet and Nepal) from Purang County (Dzong) in Tibet.
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