The Tatopani crossing in the east, similarly, opened up in October 2020 after several months of shutdown, but here, too, traders reported similar problems as in Rasuwa.

The closure of the borders—despite the damage wrought by the pandemic and because of China’s insistence that Nepal had not established adequate screening procedures—once again highlighted the unequal nature of bilateral relations. Nepal was unable to convince China about its safety processes, and the latter ignored the fact that the Tatopani and the Rasuwa crossings had emerged as important trade routes for Nepali entrepreneurs and transporters in the aftermath of the 2015 Indian blockade.

Back in April 2019, however, these issues had not come to the forefront. At that time, when I visited Rasuwa, there was a newfound sense of importance attached to the Rasuwa crossing, especially because the Tatopani border was closed at the time. Those who drove goods back and forth from Gyirong [in Tibet] were a busy lot; several locals, including my driver Krishna, had invested in container trucks. Through a few enquiries, I finally met with Rajesh the evening before he was to leave for Gyirong.

Rajesh told me China’s border infrastructure was incredibly efficient.

‘There’s a two-lane road that easily allows two trucks to pass. They’ve built a proper highway with drains, walls and tunnels in sections where landslides are common.’ The train is yet to reach Gyirong, but labourers have told Rajesh it would come in two years. ‘No one talks about the train to Kathmandu in Gyirong,’ he said. Reports suggest the Shigatse–Gyirong line will be built by 2022.

The Nepal Army has built a shorter route to Rasuwagadhi, but it is replete with stories of rocks falling on vehicles from above. I asked Rajesh about its usefulness, and he shakes his head vigorously. ‘Not at all. It’s a very risky road. There are rock falls through the seventeen-kilometre stretch, and there are no drains either.’ Just the day before we left for the border, a truck had overturned and fallen into the river. ‘The road is wider than the existing one. But they need to build drains and walls.’

Rasuwagadhi is also where the fabled train from Gyirong to Kathmandu will enter Nepal. The train, if it arrives, will render the road obsolete, but more importantly, it will signal China’s ability to overcome the Himalaya as a strategic and economic barrier in the same way that the Lhasa–Kathmandu road did in the 1960s. When the Qinghai–Tibet Railway (QTR) opened in 2006, it was a huge accomplishment, a miracle of engineering with the world’s highest altitude line built on permafrost. It used heat-regulating technology called thermosyphons, cooling sticks dug deep into the ground every few metres. Beijing’s ambitions about a railway line in Tibet go back to the early days of the twentieth century, when Sun Yat-Sen thought a trans-Tibetan railway would strangle Britain’s hold over Tibet. Mao’s attempts to extend the line from Xining in Qinghai to Tibet in 1959 were interrupted by a shortage of funds and ‘the Three-Year Disaster’ between 1959–62, a famine that was the result of the Great Leap Forward. It was not until the early years of the twenty-first century that Mao’s dream would come true. 

(With inputs from agencies)