For most part of the year, Gunji stays still. The bright yellow merry-go-round at the army school stays frozen and the stunted grass struggles to rear its head. At 10,500 feet above sea level, life in the Uttarakhand village can be uncertain at the best of times. So Lakshmi Gunjyal learned early on to adapt.“I tried everything to survive. I wanted to be a teacher, but when that didn’t work out, I got back to the trade our ancestors did, bringing pashmina wool from Tibet. But then, they shut the border, so I started this homestay,” says the 40-year-old, sitting in Gunji, one of the last villages in Uttarakhand’s Pithoragarh district before the Lipulekh Pass winds its way into Tibet.But now, she is hopeful. The Pass is set to reopen after seven years, opening the door to a cross-border trade that is buffeted by the vagaries of geography and geopolitics. The Pass has stayed shut since 2019, first due to the pandemic and later as India-China border skirmishes led to a chill in bilateral relations.Read | Nepal objects to Mansarovar Yatra via Lipulekh; India says unjustifiedAt the trijunction of India, Nepal, and China’s Tibet Autonomous Region, the Lipulekh Pass loops its way through the snow-covered Himalayan ranges, reaching 17,000 feet at its highest point. The Pass has for centuries served as the gateway for pilgrims headed to Mount Kailash as part of the Mansarovar Yatra and Lake Manasarovar in Tibet. It’s also a historical transit point for trade between India and the Taklakot market in Tibet. Gunji serves as a stopover for traders, sees customs checks and remains closed for 6 months in winter due to heavy snow. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)The region is contested, with Nepal claiming Lipulekh and the larger region, including Kalapani and Limpiyadhura, based on the 1816 Treaty of Sugauli.Which is why the Pass, and the announcement earlier this year to reopen it for business, holds immense strategic value despite the low trade volumes.But for the people of Gunji, among the many sparsely populated villages downhill from the Pass, the reopening of the trade route is more sentimental — it’s a recognition of the only way of life they have known.Story continues below this adExplained | Recalling significance of Lipulekh for India, and the China angleLipulekh Pass, 17,000 ftFor at least since the 17th century, people from these villages, and from towns downhill such as Dharchula, have trekked treacherous kilometres up to the Pass and through it, their ponies and mules laden with wares — jaggery, cereals, mill-made cotton and woollen — to be sold across the border. Once on the other side, they would pitch their tents at the Taklakot market in Tibet, stay there for six months, starting around June, as they sold their goods and collected wares to be sold in Indian markets.As the winter sets in, they return to India, this time, their ponies heavier and laden with rock salt, borax, raw wool and woollen knits. Sometimes, even sheep, goats, and horses from Tibet would make the journey back with the Indian traders. With the winter months unforgiving in Gunji and nearby villages, the traders descend further into towns such as Dharchula and beyond, where they sell the wares sourced from Tibet. The road from Dharchula winds its way up to Gunji. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)The trade operates outside the logic of modern commerce and is a mix of cash, barter and credit.Trade between the two regions was first suspended during the 1962 war with China, and reopened only in 1992. Since then, every diplomatic chill would be accompanied by uncertainty and fears that it would impact trade.Story continues below this adBut as India and China worked to mend their relationship, in 2025, the government opened the route for the Mansarovar Yatra and earlier this year, announced the reopening of the Lipulekh Pass for trade.Read | Nepal PM says India, Nepal ‘encroached’ each other’s territories, triggers rowBefore 2019, when the Pass was last shut, pilgrims and traders would have to trek up 27 km from Gunji to reach the border post and onwards to the Pass, before crossing over to the other side. But with a new road coming up on the Indian side last year, vehicles can now reach up to touching distance of the Pass. The remaining 750 metres from the border post, and the few hundred metres through the Pass itself, will have to be covered on mules or horses.A solitary milestone, with a board that says “Tibet 750 metres”, marks the border post, beyond which movements are strictly monitored by the Indian Army. The silence is broken by icy cold winds and an occasional jeep that rumbles over gravel, filled with pilgrims and tourists headed towards a higher vantage point from where they can catch a glimpse of the Kailash Mountains. A trade permit issued in 1961. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)Gunji, 10,500 ftIn Gunji, the Kali river cleaves through towering mountains and barren slopes. On one of the banks, a row of green and red tin roofs punctuates the bleak brown-grey desert around it. A modest police station that remains closed for six months a year, a few Army outposts, a primary health centre, and a dozen small homestays make up the most conspicuous landmarks in Gunji.Story continues below this adGunji’s status as the facilitator of the trans-Himalayan trade between India and China means it has a customs office that levies GST and maintains records of goods that cross the Pass. Gunji also has godowns for traders and a currency exchange centre, both of which will have to be spruced up before trade kicks off.While a market was set up for Tibetan traders in Gunji, this never took off. In 1992, the government recorded seven traders, 43 in 1995, two in 2002, and none since then.Sitting in her homestay, Lakshmi says growing up in these parts is tough. As a child, when the primary school in Gunji closed after the last teacher posted there left, she and her two siblings moved to Dharchula. She later went to college in Haldwani and got an MEd degree in Dehradun. But when Lakshmi got no teaching jobs, she returned to Gunji to take up the pashmina trade her father built in the ’90s. Her earliest memory of Taklakot in Tibet was from when she was 10 — a barren land with a few tents, no toilets, and a row of stone and wooden houses. She says she realised early on that the wool — sourced from goats in Western Tibet — had a market in India.Pointing to a tourist in a Kashmiri pheran, she says, “We bring wool from Tibet and sell it to wholesalers in Kashmir, who send it to the textile industry.”Story continues below this ad Jagdish Singh with his parents and daughter at Dharchula. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)In exchange, she would take handmade carpets, blankets, jaggery, match boxes, sugar candy, and ‘Made in India’ clothes that were in demand in Tibet.In 2018, she bought a tonne of pashmina, paying for it partly through cash (Rs 7 lakh); the rest through an informal arrangement of barter and credit, with a promise that she would pay back in goods the next season.Lakshmi is quick with the math as she explains what it cost her to bring a tonne of pashmina across the Himalayas: 17 ponies, each carrying 60 kg from Lipulekh to Dharchula, hired for Rs 5,000 each; a 5 per cent GST, truck charges of Rs 35,000 from Dharchula to Tanakpur, from where they are received by wholesalers. In all, she says, she shelled out around Rs 9 lakh for the consignment, and made about Rs 20 lakh. “There are other expenses too — rent etc. In the end, I get a small profit, something to keep us afloat through the next six months before the trade starts,” she says.The closure of the border in 2019 forced Lakshmi to open a homestay in 2022. Her guests include pilgrims visiting Adi Kailash and Om Parvat in the district. She says that if trade gets unsustainable, she will be forced to move out of Gunji.Story continues below this adHer only daughter studies in a boarding school in Nainital. “She is not keen to do my business. Young people have a different life, and I would not want to impose this struggle on her,” says Lakshmi.But for now, Lakshmi is looking forward to the trip to Tibet. “It feels like home. Our own people call us Chinese, Tibetan and Nepali, and that is when it occurs to me that I feel more welcome in Tibet than in our own state,” she says.Dharchula, 3,000 ftAround 78 km away from Gunji, in Dharchula, Daulat Singh Raipa has made several visits to the trade office in town to enquire about the resumption of trade.While the Pass was scheduled to be opened for trade from June 1 to October 31, Raipa, the general secretary of the India-Tibet Trade Committee, has been told that it would open towards the end of June.Story continues below this adRecalling his first visit to Tibet in 1998, he says he followed in the steps of his father and grandfather. “We would take our goods on mules till the border and transfer these to animals on the other side. The road on the Tibetan side was not motorable, but when we went in June 2008, we were stunned by the transformation. Roads were being constructed, new buildings had come up, and we could get a vehicle a few kilometres down the Lipulekh Pass,” says Raipa.His wife Damayanti went a year later. “It was a cold desert. We trekked for five days, carrying our two toddlers on our backs and finally pitched a tent at Taklakot (in Tibet). We had carried gur (jaggery) and misri (sugar candy) with us, and brought back salt, carpets, and wool,” she says, sitting on a midnight blue yak-wool carpet that the family brought from across the border on one of their many trips.Now, with the Pass open, the family has bought goods, including cosmetics, jaggery, sugar candy, carpets, and jackets, worth Rs 5 lakh, which are stocked up in a godown in Dharchula and which they will carry across to Tibet. “Seven years is a long time. What if fashion trends have changed, our cosmetics have gone out of fashion there, or they have stopped being reliant on the jaggery we bring?” says Raipa, who got his permit on June 23.He is excited to meet their friends from Tibet. Since 2020, when several Chinese apps were banned in India, the traders have had no contact with their Tibetan counterparts. “They have a fondness for us because the Dalai Lama lives here. Though there is a ban on carrying the Dalai Lama’s photos, many of them secretly do so and share them with us,” says Raipa.Story continues below this adDharchula, with a population of 58,413, is where people from villages such as Gunji, Garbyang, and Nabi move to during the winter months. The town sits on the border with Nepal, the two countries connected by a bridge over the river Kali.Once heavily reliant on trade, the 1962 war hit the region hard. “This is not an agrarian economy. A few crops like buckwheat are grown once a year, so when an entire village was out of work, they had to find ways to sustain themselves. Many traders went to Bajhang in Nepal to do business, others moved to the plains to pursue education. The vacuum was filled by Nepali traders from bordering villages,” says Krishna Garbyal, a Dharchula resident.The high-point of the trade in recent times was in 2004, when imports from Tibet stood at Rs 14 crore and exports at Rs 38 lakh. However, by the time the border closed in 2019, the trade had begun to fray. Tibetan salt had been displaced by cheaper alternatives from the Indian plains, borax had lost its market, Chinese-made goods had become widely available elsewhere in India, and the appreciation of the yuan made purchases in Tibet more expensive. In 2019, the last year of border trade, imports stood at a mere Rs 1.9 crore and exports at Rs 1.25 crore.In recent years, Dharchula has become a pitstop for devotees and tourists headed to Om Parvat and Adi Kailash, leading to a number of homestays and small hotels further crowding the town. According to the district administration, the town recorded 36,000 visitors in 2025 and, as of June 2026, has already seen 46,130.After the nearby Garbyang village sent two bureaucrats to the Uttarakhand cadre, several young people have left for the plains of Uttarakhand to try their hand at competitive exams. Many people here send their children to boarding schools in Nainital and Udham Singh Nagar.But for now, the town is brimming with traders from nearby villages who are making the rounds of the town’s sub-district magistrate’s office to find out about the border reopening.The Ministry of External Affairs has issued 300 permits for this year. So far, the district administration has received applications from 90 traders and helpers.The permit, an orange passport-like booklet with a stiff cover, will be issued soon, says Sub-District Magistrate Ashish Joshi. “The Intelligence Bureau is conducting background checks, after which the passes will be issued,” he says.At a retail store in Dharchula that sells everything from T-shirts to caps and dry fruits, dozens of cartons filled with biscuits, candies, chips, rice, and grains line the shop floor — ration that Archana Garbyal (40) and her husband Jagdish Singh (45) hope will see them through during their six-month-long stay at Taklakot.While Archana handles the customers trickling in, Jagdish seals the boxes. Though the permits are yet to reach them, the couple have begun stocking up on goods to be sold in Tibet, reached out to porters and arranged mules for transportation.Over the last six months, the couple have scoured markets in Delhi and around, looking for goods they can trade in Tibet. “I spent 15 days in Delhi, hunting for a needle in Azad market and Karol Bagh, bought antiques near Jama Masjid, and wood articles from Saharanpur. I have in the past even travelled to Siliguri, bought blankets from Panipat and Ludhiana,” says Archana.Jagdish’s father, Rajender Singh, 80, first went to Tibet in 1960. He came back with borax, salt, and Tibetan goats. Over time, the products changed extensively, says Jagdish. “Earlier, we would supply salt to Kumaon and Garhwal, but before the war, the cheap Sambhar salt appeared in Garhwal, reducing the demand for salt from Tibet,” he says.Archana says there have been changes on the other side, too. “Last time we went, things were very different in Tibet. They have increased Chinese presence now — there are nightclubs and a completely different way of life,” she says.But when he goes back, Jagdish will hope at least one thing remains constant — the Tibetan love for the jaggery he and the other Indian traders will take with them. “It’s scary… feels like we are crossing over for the first time,” he says, as he seals another box of their ration.