After driving through the night, we woke to the desolate sight of the Aksai Chin. A high altitude desert, too peripheral and too barren to have been of historical value, the Aksai Chin was to become one of the main focuses of the 1962 Sino-Indian border war.

In 1914, the British Indian government, eager to capitalise on their current strengths and formalise their north east boundaries with Tibet, held unsuccessful talks with Chinese and Tibetan delegates in the Indian hillstation of Simla (Shimla), the result of which was each of the three parties left with differing ideas of the borders drawn.
Fifty years, and various governments and dynasties later, the Indian government recognised the borders inherited from pre-independence India (the MacMahmon line, defined along the Himalayan watershed), while the PRC in China recognised limits of influence defined at times more advantageous to the Chinese state.
In Autumn 1962, while the attentions of the world were focussed on events around Cuba, differences between the Chinese and Indian interpretations of the border lead to a series of battles along the Himalaya, from Kashmir to Arunachal Pradesh. The better equipped & positioned People's Liberation Army won substantial victories, before retreating along most of the border to the line recognised by India. Today, China still occupies the Aksai Chin, an area of Kashmir 'above' Laddakh, and Chinese maps generally extend 100km into Indian Arunachal Pradesh.

The Aksai Chin felt like the ultimate isolation. A desert from Ladakh to the Chang Tang of Northern Tibet, we were crossing a swathe of land where nothing lived. The altitude and dry air made the few colours incredibly vivid, and gave everything an even more surreal feeling.

From a traveller's perspective, little more can have been at stake in the war than national pride (though the Aksai Chin now is an essential link on the West Tibet road). Aside from a couple of tiny villages, the expanse of the plateau plays host only to brackish lakes and smashed beer bottles. The midday sun scorches, and exposed nights freeze. The flat expanse of plateau contrasts strongly with the endless valleys of the previous days.

Eventually, a lake marked the border of the Tibetan Autonomous Region and, over a greasy lunch of very Turkish noodles at Sumish we found ourselves - rather unsteadily on the narrow benches - at least technically inside Tibet. However, there was no sign of any Tibetans, the only 'locals' being Uighurs, moved there from Xinjiang for road maintenance.

Lungmo Co - A building and collection of tents gained Sumish, the first 'town' inside Tibet, a mention on the map.

The road then meandered, gradually falling from the height of the Aksai Chin before rising again to the 5000m Lungmo Co [lake] near Changmar. We reached there in the early evening of the third day, facing a spectacular backdrop of snow-capped mountains.