Visited Nathu-La, once a key pass of the ancient Silk Route, after a gap of 25 years.

Remarkably striking infrastructural and connectivity work has taken place since 2015. We also traced the old single lane motorable road from Gangtok to Nathu-La which we had used in 2001.

Exemplary work is being done by the Indian Army in these forbidding heights. Salute to the commitment, determination and dynamism of its personnel. Resumption of border trade from August 2026, breathes a new life again into this ancient route.

Standing at this crucial and strategic pass, one cannot but help contemplate on how civilisational Bharat defined and shaped the Silk Route – through which flowed ideas, art, trade and commerce – across the ancient world.

Iconic scholar Rahul Sankrityayan perhaps best described Bharat’s civilisational flow and outpouring against great odds when he wrote:

“Roads between India and China and Tibet were extremely dangerous; big deserts had to be crossed where there was no bird in the air or animal on the ground, and so the track was very difficult to find. About two in ten could reach the destination – the rest would become victims of pestilence and pirates, slippery passes and swift rivers, dacoits and famines…It was the fervour of idealism, the spirit of self-sacrifice and defiance of death that were at the root of the spread of Indian culture in these distant lands. Let us offer our homage to the memory of those selfless saintly scholars and pray that their spirit may once more animate the soul of modern India, so that she may once more rise to a glorious place in the comity of nations.”

(Rahul Sankrityayan, Selected Essays, 1984)

SOURCE

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19P53im5pN/