(TibetanReview.net, Nov14’25) – India and China have been slowly reopening each other to business, pilgrimage, tourism, and flight services in recent months after a freeze in bilateral ties that lasted some five years as a result of border clashes in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley in mid-2020. However, the reopening is yet to reach the centuries-old historical India-Tibet border trade fairs across the length of the Himalayas.
As the International Lavi Trade Fair in the Shimla district’s Rampur, about 130 kilometres from India’s Himachal Pradesh state capital, opened this year on Nov 11, one problem stands out – it is no longer international because the Tibet border still remains closed.
The resumption of trade with Tibet through Shipki-La border in Himachal’s Kinnaur district would boost the sale of traditional items, generate employment, and benefit traders on both sides, the PTI news agency Nov 13 cited traders from the state who attended the fair as saying.
Traders, especially from the state’s Kinnaur district, are keen on the resumption of the trade route, which was discontinued during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and did not reopen following a downward spiral in bilateral ties with China as a result of the Galwan valley border scuffle in which troops from the two sides used stones, spiked rods, and the like in mid-2020, resulting in fatalities on both sides.
“The sale of traditional items like woollens, Pasham (wool), and dry fruits saw a boost then, as (Tibetan) goods would be sold in Rampur, and our goods would be sold to traders from Tibet,” Chander Mohan Negi, a trader from Kinnaur’s Nichar, has said.
Inaugurating the Lavi fair on Nov 11, Himachal Pradesh Governor Shiv Pratap Shukla has said he — as well as the state government — had taken up the matter with New Delhi, and it was being pursued by Union Minister of Commerce Piyush Goel.
The traders from Kinnaur, who had been coming to the trade fair for the past 25-30 years, have also expressed concern over the impact of online sales on their business. And the closure of the trade route is gradually affecting the trade fair’s vibrancy, they have said.
The report said a large number of items, including wool, raw silk, yak hair, China clay, borax, butter, common salt, ready-made garments, shoes, quilts, blankets, carpets, and local herbal medicines, as well as animals such as horses, goats, sheep, were earlier imported from Tibet, the traders have said.
The report said the Lavi fair, a nearly 300-year-old international event, was an outcome of a treaty between the state of Bushahr and Tibet during the regime of Raja Kehar Singh. The pact was stated to have been solidified by the exchange of Tibetan horses and Bushahr swords.
The report cited the state’s Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh as having emphasised earlier that Shipki-La, once an offshoot of the legendary Silk Route and formalised as a border trade point under the India-China bilateral agreement of 1994, had played a vital role in trans-Himalayan economic and cultural exchanges.
The occasion was the Jun 10 launch by the chief minister of tourism activities from Shipki La on the India-Tibet Border, located at an altitude of 3,930 metres.
The report noted that in Aug 2025, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had informed the state government that the Government of India had initiated discussions with China for the resumption of border trade through all three designated points: Shipki-La (Himachal Pradesh), Lipulekh (Uttarakhand), and Nathu La (Sikkim).