After 24 years of work, strategic military outpost near India-China border connected with motorable road

DEHRADUN: Twenty-four years after work started on a road connecting the strategic military post of Rimkhim near the Indo-China border in Uttarakhand with Malari, located almost 41 km away, it was opened for vehicles of the Army and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) on Wednesday.
The road was constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) which is responsible for the construction and upkeep of roads near the country’s borders.Providing details of the project, R Subramaniam, commander, 41 BRDO, which executed the work, told TOI, “It took us 24 years for completing the project because there were a lot of bottlenecks on the route. The terrain is very difficult and the work had to be done at a height of over 11,000 feet. The elevation of the road is around 35 degrees and we had to face numerous challenges in cutting through the mountain. The work picked up only in the last two years when the final stretch was completed. I am happy that we could finish the project without any casualties.”
The road which will primarily be used by the Army and ITBP is expected to cut travel time significantly. “It will now take us just around three hours to reach Rimkhim from Joshimath while earlier the time taken was almost two days because of the absence of a direct motorable road,” said an Army officer stationed at Joshimath, a prominent military base located over a hundred kilometres from Rimkhim.
Rimkhim is a strategic military post since it is located close to the Barahoti ridge, the last point on the Indian side of the border from which Tibet, currently under the jurisdiction of China, is visible. In the past, there have been reports of the Chinese army’s incursions in the area.
Army sources said that the road connectivity to Rimkhim will be “ a turning point for building infrastructure in the border areas.” “It will speed up all the defence establishment projects in the area. Till now, the Army was relying on choppers for transporting big machines required for construction but with a road in place, things should be much easier,” said a senior defence official.