A year after India-China border clash, Ladakh hopes tourists will return
- Security measures and Covid-19 restrictions have affected the livelihoods of the tourism-reliant region, pushing some to work for the Indian army
- But businesses are opening up even as China and India have boosted their troop numbers at the border by tens of thousands
A year after China-India border clashes erupted in Ladakh in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the tourism-reliant Indian territory is reopening to visitors even as uncertainty lingers and the region remains heavily fortified.
Chinese and Indian troops fought last year in May near the Pangong Lake in Ladakh’s east, while another skirmish a month later at the Galwan Valley in northeast Ladakh left 20 soldiers dead.
Phuntsog Tsering, a doctor of Tibetan medicine who works at a Covid-19 health centre in the remote Chushul village, said many security measures remained in place, affecting the livelihoods of the region’s 290,000 people.
“Since the border clash, local residents have lost work due to low tourism in the area as many areas were restricted, especially Pangong Lake,” he said.
“Local nomads aren’t allowed to travel to some areas where they had gone for years to graze their cattle.”
Many locals have increasingly been working for the Indian army as labourers, Tsering said.
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India has in the past months boosted its troops along the 3,488km Line of Actual Control that divides the two nations, with more than 200,000 soldiers now stationed at the border.