What Nathu La Actually Is, and Why It Matters
Nathu La sits at 14,140 feet in the Sikkim Himalayas, about 54 kilometres east of Gangtok, on the old Silk Road trade route between India and Tibet. The pass was sealed after the 1962 Sino-Indian War and remained closed for 44 years. It reopened in 2006 as a designated border trade point, one of only a handful of places on the entire India-China border where both sides have agreed to a formal, functioning crossing.
