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In Eastern Ladakh PART-III

Mending vital LAC link

The Indian troops stationed along the 255 km-long Darbuk-Shayok-Daulat Baig Oldie (DS-DBO) axis keep vigil amid howling winds and gurgling Shayok river in the rugged Karakoram mountain range of eastern Ladakh.

Mending vital LAC link


Ajay Banerjee

The Indian troops stationed along the 255 km-long Darbuk-Shayok-Daulat Baig Oldie (DS-DBO) axis keep vigil amid howling winds and gurgling Shayok river in the rugged Karakoram mountain range of eastern Ladakh.

Eastern Ladakh shares a 826-km frontier with China and is geographically defined as the area from Karakoram Pass in the north to Demchok in the south-east.

The DS-DBO road is a key thrust area of the Ministry of Defence for this strategic northern-most corner of India — termed sub-sector north (SSN) by the military. The road will help India’s efforts to dominate the Line of Actual Control (LAC) — the de facto border — and also areas abutting Aksai Chin (under Chinese control), Jiwan Nalla, Chip-Chap river, etc. The two armies have had face-offs in 2013 and 2014 in the area over differing perception of the LAC.

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DBO, located at 16,700 feet, is a flat plateau. It hosts a mud-paved Indian Air Force’s advanced landing ground. It’s just 20 km short of the 18,726-foot-high Karakoram Pass that divides Ladakh and Xinjiang province of China.

A northward journey commencing from Darbuk, located 110 km east of Leh across the 17,800-foot-high Chang La, is tough, tricky and runs through a treacherous terrain where oxygen is scarce and the road runs at an altitude of 14,000 feet or more.

The hamlet of Shayok, comprising 25 families, is the last Indian village on this route. The remaining 210 km from Shayok to DBO has no civilian population and jagged mountains of the Karakoram range dominate the landscape.

In the first week of July, a new bridge across the Shayok river was opened. However, the river, a tributary of the Indus, needs to be bridged at five more places to make the road useable 24x7.

“In the winter, it’s easier. Trucks can run across the frozen Shayok. In summer, we have to time our move with the snowmelt,” says Col BS Uppal, whose battalion is based at DBO. The work on completing road is being monitored from the South Block in Delhi.

The previous road — built between 2000 and 2012 at a cost of Rs 320 crore — was too close to the Shyok river and got washed away. Around 160 km of it is being re-aligned. As of now, stretch up to 105-km mark is metalled. This year’s target is to stretch it further to 156 km.

The other option to reach DBO from Leh is via the 20,000-foot-high Saser La.

The Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) is currently studying a way to make a road or a tunnel under the permafrost of Saser La. As of now, there is no commercial use of the DS-DBO road.

The sensitivity of the Karakoram Pass was studied by Sir Francis Younghusband, a British Army officer and explorer, in the early 1900s. He feared a Russian invasion through the Karakoram Pass. But those fears are long gone — India and China have a rare settled boundary at the Karakoram Pass.

(To be concluded)

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