Jelep La, mules and wool: the Silk Route story

Not one road but a trade track

The name Old Silk Route is a modern travel label. The great Silk Road of Central Asia never ran through Sikkim, and Sikkim's own traders would not have called this path by that name. What did exist, for centuries, was a network of mule and yak tracks linking the plains of Bengal with Lhasa through the Chumbi Valley, the narrow wedge of Tibet that pushes south between Sikkim and Bhutan. The eastern branch of that network climbed out of Kalimpong, through Pedong, Rhenock and Rongli, up to Dzuluk and Gnathang, and over Jelep La at about 4,390 m.

From the pass the path dropped to Yatung in the Chumbi Valley and continued north to Phari, Gyantse and Lhasa. Another branch left Gangtok, passed Changu (Tsomgo) Lake and Kupup and joined the same pass. Today's road from Rongli to Kupup follows the line of that old track for much of its length, although it was rebuilt as a motor road by the Border Roads Organisation for the Army.

Wool, furs and grain on the backs of mules

By the early twentieth century Kalimpong had grown into the main Indian market for the Tibet trade. Its Wikipedia article records it as an important outpost in the trade of furs, wool and food grains between India and Tibet, helped by its closeness to the Jelep La and Nathu La passes. Raw Tibetan wool came south to be graded, baled and sent on to the mills; grain, cloth and other goods went north.

The carrying was done by animals and the people who drove them. Mule caravans moved in long strings, resting each night at halting places along the track. Zuluk, as its Wikipedia article notes, was one of those overnight stops on the way from Kalimpong to Jelep La. The anthropologist Tina Harris, in her 2013 book Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions, follows this route and the traders and muleteers who worked it, and is the best single starting point for readers who want more.

When you drive the loops above Zuluk, imagine the same climb on foot beside a pack mule, in snow, with a load of wool behind you. That is what this road was for most of its life.

1888: the fort at Lingtu and the fight at Gnathang

In the mid-1880s Tibetan troops crossed Jelep La and built a fort at Lingtu, on the ridge above Gnathang, inside territory the British regarded as Sikkim. Britain, which had been extending its influence over Sikkim, demanded their withdrawal. When that did not happen, a force under Brigadier-General Thomas Graham was sent up from the plains in March 1888. According to the Wikipedia article on the Sikkim expedition, Graham's troops attacked the stockade at Jeluk on 20 March and took Lingtu fort on 21 March. Jeluk is usually identified with present-day Zuluk.

The British then held a fortified camp at Gnathang. On 22 May 1888 Tibetan forces attacked it early in the morning; after about three hours they withdrew. British records claimed around 3,000 attackers, with three British dead and eight wounded. Through the summer both sides reinforced. In late September Graham moved against the Tibetan positions at Tuko La and Jelep La, took both, and briefly pushed down into the Chumbi Valley as far as Yatung before withdrawing.

The fighting led to the Convention of Calcutta, signed on 17 March 1890 between Britain and Qing China, which recognised British control over Sikkim and defined the Sikkim–Tibet border along the watershed. A trade mart at Yatung followed under regulations agreed in 1893.

Two privates of the Derbyshire Regiment

History at this altitude is not only battles. Two soldiers of E Company, 2nd Battalion Derbyshire Regiment, Private W. Redfern and Private E. Purdy, died at Camp Gnatong in November 1888 while serving with the Sikkim Field Force. Their comrades paid for a brass plaque in their memory, which still hangs in St Giles Church at Normanton-by-Derby in England and is recorded on the Imperial War Museum's War Memorials Register.

In Nathang itself, a memorial marks those who died while the camp was occupied in the years after 1888. Many of the deaths were from cold and illness rather than fighting. Visitors who reach the plateau in January, when nights fall well below −10 °C, understand why. Treat the site with the same respect you would give any cemetery.

Younghusband, a Dalai Lama and the long quiet

Gnathang was a starting point again fifteen years later. The British expedition to Tibet under Francis Younghusband departed Gnathong on 11 December 1903, with thousands of porters and pack animals, and crossed into the Chumbi Valley on its way to Gyantse and Lhasa. Wikipedia's article on Jelep La notes that the expedition used this pass, and that in 1910 the 13th Dalai Lama fled south over Jelep La into Sikkim and on to Darjeeling to escape a Chinese army.

Trade carried on through these upheavals. It shrank sharply after the Chinese crackdown in Tibet in 1959, and after the Sino-Indian war of 1962 both Jelep La and Nathu La were closed. Nathu La reopened for limited border trade in 2006. Jelep La has stayed shut. The old halting places became Army camps and border villages, and only in recent years, with homestays and the Silk Route name, did travellers start arriving in numbers.

Seeing the history on the ground

Very little of this story survives as monuments, so it helps to know where to look. At Zuluk, think of the halting place where mule trains rested before the long climb; the Army camp now stands on the same shelf of hillside. On the drive up to Nathang, the ridges to your right as you climb are the Lingtu side, where the Tibetan fort stood in 1888. At Nathang, stop at the memorial, then look up the valley towards the passes the British crossed in September that year.

Beyond Nathang the road passes Tukla, a name most visitors connect with the Tuko La of the 1888 reports, and reaches Kupup, from where Jelep La lies only a few kilometres away behind the ridge. You cannot go to the pass, and you should not photograph the Army positions, but on a clear day your driver can point out its direction. Standing there in the wind at about 4,000 m, it is easy to see why traders, soldiers and a fleeing Dalai Lama all needed the same narrow gap in the mountains.

Timeline at a glance

Dates below come from the sources listed in the next section. Where sources disagree, we give the more cautious wording.

Sources and where to read more

We have kept this account to what can be checked. Readers who want to go further can start with these:

• Wikipedia: Sikkim expedition (dates, commanders and the 1888 fighting, citing Paget 1907 and other sources)
• Wikipedia: Jelep La, Nathang Valley, Zuluk and Kalimpong (route, trade and closure)
• Wikipedia: British expedition to Tibet (departure from Gnathong, 1903)
• William Henry Paget, Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India (1907), the official British account
• Tina Harris, Geographical Diversions: Tibetan Trade, Global Transactions (University of Georgia Press, 2013)
• Imperial War Museum, War Memorials Register: Derbyshire Regiment plaque, St Giles Church, Normanton-by-Derby