Days before the Indian and Chinese governments open up Nathula, one Army porter of Village Yakla, just 16-km from the frontier with Tibet, is already on a nostalgic trip. Now 76 and worn from over half a century of labour, Oloh crossed over from Shigatze in Tibet into India 56 years back.

“I decided to go on a long trek with a few friends. We just ended up crossing the border. I don’t know where they are, some might have gone back, some might have died but I have stayed on,” Oloh says, his dark house overlooking the winding mountains that roll down from the fabled pass he once crossed.

After marrying Phuboh about four years later — she also crossed the border at Nathula from Shigatze — Oloh spent the last half-century making a living the only way it is possible to do in the sprinkling of villages and settlements that dot the 56-km road from Nathula to the Sikkimese capital.

With an unemployed son in Gangtok and a daughter who runs a provisions store in Kochi, Oloh and Phuboh continue to live on their own. “My daughter is doing well and keeps telling us to live with her. We visited her four years ago, but it is too hot in Kerala,” Oloh says.

Scores of Tibetans continue to live at the large Ravangla refugee camp not far from Gangtok, a facility where Tibetan infiltrators are rehabilitated into the rest of Sikkim. “We feel bad about what China did to our country, but what can we really do? Anyway, we are very happy here,” Oloh says.