India to reopen the Road to Mandalay

For more than a century the Road to Mandalay has evoked longing, nostalgia and
the exotic East for artists ranging from Rudyard Kipling and George Orwell
to Frank Sinatra and Robbie Williams.

Now travellers from India will be able to share their passion for Burma's
beauty when its eastern border is opened to a new bus route from Imphal to
Mandalay, the former capital and gateway to the country's tribal north.

A new highway is expected to be completed by October, when travellers will be
able to board a bus from Imphal in India's Manipur state to Mandalay more
than 14 hours away for around £20.

The Indian and Burmese governments believe the road will dramatically increase
trade between the two remote regions either side of the border at Moreh, and
pave the way for greater investment as Burma continues its emergence from
decades of isolation under military rule.

The route will open new travel possibilities not only for lovers of Kipling's
Barrack-Room Ballads and Orwell's Burmese Days, but also for the descendants
of those who fought along it in one of the fiercest battles of the Second
World War. It was at Imphal and nearby Kohima that British, Indian, Burmese
and Nepali soldiers finally stopped the Japanese advance in heroic hand to
hand combat.

More recently it has been one of the world's busiest drug trafficking routes
in the transportation of heroin and amphetamines through Asia to Europe.

Traders on the eastern side of the border have also dispatched Burmese teak to
India while buying Indian pressure cookers, bicycles and cheap medicines.

Officials from both countries believe the slim volumes of legitimate trade
will increase dramatically when the road opens in October and again later
when it opens to freight traffic.

Indian officials confirmed they had reached agreement with the Burmese
counterparts on the new route in a meeting in the capital Nay Pyi Taw
earlier this month.

Discussions began under the previous prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, but a
deal eluded his officials. His successor, Narendra Modi, is determined to
raise India's profile and improve its political and trading relationships
with its immediate neighbours, particular those in South-East Asia.

The new road is one of a number of planned strategic highways to connect India
with Kunming in China and Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia. China earlier
reached agreement to reopen the Stilwell Road built during the Second World
War to supply arms from British India to Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist
Chinese forces.

The Indian government said the agreement was made after its officials briefed
their Burmese colleagues on a number of road projects it had undertaken in
the country, including 70 bridges on the Tamu-Kalay-Kalewa Friendship
Highway – part of the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway.

Sonny Nyunt Thein of the Burmese government-linked think tank Egress said he
welcomed the development because those living close to the border
desperately needed the economic benefits it would bring. "There is no public
transport there and to be honest trade is definitely needed".

Burmese historian Thant Myint-U, who is also an adviser to the country's
president Thein Sein, said despite the evocative place 'Road to Mandalay'
commands in literary memory, there has never been a proper road between
India and Burma.

"The amazing thing is that even though Burma and India were both part of the
British Indian Empire, there was no proper road, no rail link, and pretty
much no overland route connecting the two during the entire period of
colonial rule…The overland route became reality only in 1945 when the Ledo
road was finally finished. This bus route is part of a much bigger historic
turn that is taking place, a weaving together of the India, Burma, and China
borderlands, and the creation of Burma as an Asian crossroads for the first
time in history", he said.

http://www.information.myanmaronlinecentre.com/india-to-reopen-the-road-to-mandalay/