Today, The Times of India is carrying renewed calls to formally reopen the “Stilwell Road” between northeastern India and southwestern China – across northern Burma. With a border crossing open between China and India at the Nathu La Pass, we will, no doubt, see more pressure to revitalise other trade routes between the world’s two most populous nations.

The Times article notes that 1,033 km of this road (and I use the term loosely) “lies within the jungle-covered mountains and swampy valleys of northern Myanmar’s Kachin State”.

Anybody who has undertaken any journeys in that part of the world will understand that maintaining such a road as a trade link will be a gigantic undertaking…