THE ROAD WORKERS ON THE KARDUNG-LA

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KardungLa - 5602m The KardungLa is the pass leading to the last valley in the north of India, enclosed within China and Pakistan. Highly strategic for the Indian Army, the KardungLa has been for many years the highest road in the world ... open 365 days a year : quite a nightmare for the 300 young road workers who build and rebuild it everyday.

7 soldiers live at the top everyday, while the temperatures often go below -45¡C -50¡C.

The road workers live in large tents among stones and ice, and their sole heat seems to be due to the blazing tar barrels along the road.

These young people, sometimes teenagers, give the landscape its inhuman look.

Most of the young Indians working there haven't got anything to protect against the sun ; nothing either to avoid inhaling all the time the tar fumes. They were given strong short boots ... the same size for everybody, which makes the teenagers look like clowns. With the tar solidifying on their suits, some remind me the black birds on the oil slick. The way up to the pass is like a slow progression to a oppressive closed area ... where the skilled and organised workers of the bottom of the road turn imperceptibly by going up to the top into young distraught slaves and to their absurd task. The first one are 30 years old on an average ; the last one, squatting down the road and getting bit of gravel, are not more than teenagers.

1998 September, the 27th At 10 am, the temperatures are still below -15¡C at the pass. Reaching the Kardung Valley by car, we bumped into these   men.

I hardly accept staying in a car while these men are obviously sacrifying themselves so that cars may reach the pass. Nevertheless their world seems to me much more fascinating than terrible. We feel in our deepest being that we have to stop here one or two hours ... just to talk.

The work goes on. But many Indians stay around us and a kind of discussion appears by improvisation. This is quite incredible because nobody understand what the others say, and despite that, by juggling with the proper nouns and figures (the only English words every Indians know), the discussion lasts for 2 hours. They told us they come from the Bihar area, one of the most populated and poorest area in India, jammed between Varanasi and Calcutta. They grew up in one of the most humid and stickiest area to end in this highly and icy world. Most of them were street kids in Patna, the capital of Bihar. They usually work here during 10 months, for 45 roupies a day (1$US) ; and as they cannot spend their monney here, they feel very proud to become richer everyday.