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Photos: Balaji Vittal

On the other side A Chinese outpost with barbed wires demarcating the two nations at Nathula Pass.

If ‘Café 14000’ sounds like a hangout joint at a busy crossroad on Park Street, Kolkata you’re partly correct. It does overlook an important junction on a busy trade route. The trade route is called the Silk Route and the junction – NathuLa (‘Pass of the Listening Ear’) where it is all about a single stretch of barbed wire coming between two nations - India and China. And that too at 14,200 feet above MSL where the air is rarefied and thermal innerwear battle with frosty Tibetan winds.

The best route to get there is from Gangtok, East Sikkim. Kolkata to Bagdogra airport by a one hour flight and drive up from Bagdogra airport to Gangtok. (though it is recommended that one stops over at Darjeeling for a night en route).

Gangtok is a typical hill town with quaint bazaars, ethnic ware, picture postcard backdrops and strong limbed men with rugged, weather beaten faces. Indicas and Omnis have replaced pull carts (always seemingly going uphill) over time. Winter days are predictably short in the Eastern fringe. Mists start swirling around 3 pm and the daylight is totally snuffed out by 5.10 pm. Neon lights light up cozy pubs and restaurants that serve up among others, popular Sikkimese brands of beer like Hit, Dansburg Blue, Dansburg, Shangrila Whisky, Cherry Brandy etc. These are mostly prepared at a rum distillery in Rangpo or at a beer brewery at Mellibazar.

Entry passes for NathuLa need to be obtained a day in advance in Gangtok. And these are issued to Indian Nationals only against valid photo identity proofs; only 4 days a week. Breakfast needs to be forced down the throat with coffee by 7 a.m. if you wish to get done with the formalities of passes before the rush begins. There are 52 km to traverse. Rather, 8000 feet of vertical distance to scale. Around 8 a.m., the convoy of 4 x 4 powered jeeps begin their mountain trek on one of the world’s highest motorable roads. Along the laboured journey on the Dantek Project roads maintained by Border Roads Organisation, ice can be sighted in the recesses of the rock faces and on the slopes, entwined around the trunks of deathly bare, leafless autumn trees.

At 12,400 feet the journey breaks for sweetened tea and momos at the semi frozen 1 km long, oval shaped Chhangu Lake. Tourists have a chance to purchase souvenirs, ride yaks or simply gaze at the blinding azure blue sky and gulp in the freshest oxygen a city dweller can hope to get.

A Chinese soldier on the other side of the fence

A couple of Indian Army check posts later, the vehicles cry a halt at 14,000 ft. We are at NathuLa. From here it’s a 1 km trek to the frontier. “Walk slowly, don’t exert yourself,” is the advice. Walk! With smelling salts and cameras ready, with your woolens wrapped tightly… past slower walkers, up a series of steps, past a commemorative stone, past a Lal Kothi (red house), past The Indian Tricolour…. It’s the frontier with the flag of Peoples Republic of China, a Chinese outpost and smiling Chinese soldiers on the other side. Cameras exchange hands easily across the waist high barbed wire as Chinese soldiers oblige the tourists by posing for photographs. Café 14000 plays a superb host with steaming coffee, fresh cakes, soup, biscuits and an STD booth. Make sure you collect your certificate of having visited this high ground.

The NathuLa has been opened for tourists in July 2006 after 44 years post the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962.

Hopefully, never to close again.

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