Earlier this year I enjoyed a two-day walk with Rohit Rasaily, a former civil servant who now runs a homestay at Raniban on the banks of the Rishi River. For some years Rohit has been involved in a community project with other local homestay owners to uncover and restore surviving sections of the old trade route that once linked Lhasa with Kalimpong, before the border closure that followed the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962 brought centuries of commercial activity to an abrupt end.
I had long been fascinated by images of the mule caravans entering Kalimpong, unloading at the warehouses around 11th Mile, and camping on the Mela Ground, the broad expanse of flat land that is now Kalimpong’s main sports stadium. Indeed, modern Kalimpong had grown wealthy on trade with Tibet. I wanted to gain whatever sense I could of the experience of the men who risked their lives on this gruelling journey.
For centuries, trade between Tibet and South Asia was dominated by Newari merchants from the Kathmandu Valley. Yet as the East India Company expanded its influence across the Indian subcontinent during the 18th century, British officials also began to see two-way commercial opportunities with Tibet. Yet for more than a century, the Tibetan authorities remained wary of foreign influence.
The geopolitical landscape changed in 1865, when the British annexed the Kalimpong tract from Bhutan, after the brief Anglo-Bhutan Duar War. At that stage Kalimpong was a small hamlet, but the British now recognised its potential as a gateway to Tibet. They began gradually improving the route north.
Trade remained modest for several decades. It was only after Francis Younghusband’s military expedition to Tibet in 1904 that trade relations were formalised and the frontier between Sikkim and Tibet more clearly defined.
I met Rohit, accompanied by his young son, in the town of Pedong and we set off along part of this historic road. Between Reshi and Pedong much of the original mule road has now disappeared beneath a modern military highway. So our walk alternated between stretches of roadside offering expansive views across the hills, and surviving fragments of the old route that wound through forests, hamlets and terraced smallholdings, landscapes that have changed little over the past century.
On the way, Rohit explained that the caravans typically consisted of two hundred to three hundred mules, with one handler responsible for every two or three animals. By the 1920s, hundreds of such caravans made this journey each year.
Loaded up in Lhasa with raw sheep’s wool, sheepskins and goatskins, borax and yak tails, the caravans embarked on a journey of roughly three weeks. Covering around twenty miles a day, they passed through Gyantse, descended into the Chumbi Valley through Yatung, then climbed steadily towards the windswept Jalep La, up to an altitude of 4,390 metres, before crossing into Sikkim. The pass itself could be forbidding; snowstorms could strike unexpectedly, while temperatures could plunge well below freezing. There was a constant risk of being targeted by bandits.
From Jalep La there followed a descent down through Sikkim, via Rongli, Rhenock, and over the Reshi River into West Bengal. Having offloaded their cargo in Kalimpong, the men and mules would rest for a week or more, depending on the time of year, before loading up with cotton, ‘brick tea’, rice, sugar, spices, Indian salt, cigarettes, and European-manufactured goods – including Rolex watches, and then retraced their steps back to Lhasa.
Some of what Rohit told me has passed down through the generations. At one point we rounded a bend and he gestured towards Rhenock spread across the hillside ahead of us.
“That was the first halting station when they had left Kalimpong,” he explained. “Or the last stop for traders coming down from Tibet.”
He pointed out the clusters of shops…
“There were many cooking businesses there,” he said. “The traders arrived hungry. Every mule wore a bell around its neck, so people in the town could hear the caravans approaching from far away across the hills. As soon as they heard the bells, they knew it was time to begin preparing the evening meal.”
As we walked on, I could imagine hundreds of animals winding down the mountainside, bells chiming through the dusk, weary traders looking forward to food and shelter after another day on the trail. On the road into Rhenock, he pointed to an ancient animal drinking trough, and the flat area of camping ground, where the traders would set up their tents for the night.
Today, Rohit and his colleagues are working to recover elements of that forgotten past. Their project has focused on excavating surviving sections of the route between Reshi and Aritar. In places they have found the original paving almost exactly as laid. Elsewhere, stones have been removed over time for building projects or road construction, so sections have been rebuilt using traditional methods. Among the earth and vegetation, they have unearthed hundreds of horseshoes.
Yes, for just a moment, listening to Rohit’s stories, I swear I could hear the distant jingle of yet another caravan, and the click-clack of hooves picking their arduous way over these stones towards Kalimpong.
