Read the passage given below and answer the question.
One cold April morning in 2018, I realised that out of 900 applicants, we were one of the 80 who had been granted a permit to visit the Nathu La pass that day.
Look up words used to describe a mountain or a mountain range, none will do justice to explain the sheer grandeur of the Himalayas. Spellbinding is one way to describe the Nathu La mountain pass in the Dongkya Range of the Himalayas, connecting the Chinese border at Tibet and Sikkim.
Only special permits issued by designated operators allow one access to the Nathu La pass. And the fact that we were among those issued permits bestowed our Sikkim trip with a cherry on the top.
At 14,400 feet above sea level, this region is other worldly. A simple white layer had never added such beauty to the scenery as the blanket of snow did to the Himalayan pass. Amid the scattered conversation of our fellow travellers, my mind was having a hard time deciding what aspect of the scenery to take in first. A small crowd gathered a few feet away at the bottom of the pass ended my indecisiveness.
With profound respect for our soldiers lingering in the air, we began our ascent up a trail. One of the biggest tragedies that day was the restriction on taking cameras to the top, fuelling the constant fear that I would forget some crucial detail about that once-in-a-lifetime spectacle. But the absence of a camera only aided in the permanent etching of every grain of snow in our minds.
The sound of 80 pairs of boots crunching in the snow halted as we reached the top of the mountain pass. Five feet away stood a barbed wire fence. We were officially on the India-China border. At that height, everything seemed very far away or far beneath us, and the sight below the mountain ranges was a patchwork of green, brown and white. Some tourists abruptly stepped back when they realised that the patch of land towards our left was, in fact, a minefield. |
