Opinion | The Himalayan Tinderbox: How Nepal’s Geography Places It at South Asia’s Most Dangerous Intersection

The military confrontation between Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh, in June 2020, was the deadliest clash on that border in 45 years. Twenty Indian soldiers were killed. China, which initially denied any casualties, later officially acknowledged four of its soldiers had died, though Indian estimates ran considerably higher. The fighting took place roughly 800 kilometres west of Nepal’s northwestern border. Its consequences reached Kathmandu faster than most observers expected — though not in the sequence that is commonly told.

The sequence matters. India inaugurated a new road link to the Lipulekh pass on 8 May 2020, which Nepal protested on the grounds that it passed through territory it claims. Nepal’s parliament passed a constitutional amendment incorporating Lipulekh, Limpiyadhura and Kalapani into its official map on 13 June 2020 — two days before the Galwan Valley clash on 15–16 June. The map amendment was not a response to Galwan; the Galwan clash occurred into an atmosphere already inflamed by Nepal-India tensions over the road. What the near-simultaneous occurrence of both events did was ensure that India was diplomatically wrong-footed on two Himalayan fronts within days of each other, sharply limiting New Delhi’s room to respond with its full weight to either.

India suspected Chinese encouragement behind Nepal’s map move. India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson publicly accused Nepal of acting “at the behest of someone else,” a thinly veiled reference to Beijing. Nepal’s government rejected the suggestion. The question of whether China encouraged Kathmandu to move on the map claim at that particular moment cannot be definitively resolved from the public record. What the record does show is more ambiguous than the original article suggested: China did not publicly endorse Nepal’s map in 2020, and requested both countries resolve the issue bilaterally. When China released its own “standard” map in 2023, it did not reflect Nepal’s 2020 territorial claims — indicating Beijing had not, in fact, accepted Nepal’s position.

The more recent pattern has been one of China and India reaching bilateral agreements on Lipulekh trade routes without consulting Nepal, which has angered Kathmandu and generated diplomatic notes to both neighbours.

Lipulekh is not only a territorial claim. It is a trade route of genuine strategic significance. The pass connects Nepal, India and Tibet at a trijunction that has been contested in multiple forms since the 1954 India-China agreement to use it for trade and pilgrimage — an agreement reached without Nepal. India and China have concluded multiple such agreements over the pass’s use, consistently sidelining Nepal’s claimed sovereignty over the approach. Nepal’s anger at being excluded from decisions affecting territory it claims is legitimate; the question of whether Beijing is a useful or reliable ally in pressing that claim is considerably less clear, given China’s own conduct.

Nepal’s geography places it at the intersection of an India-China military confrontation of a seriousness not seen since 1962, on one side, and deepening Chinese economic and infrastructure entanglement on the other. The combustibility of that intersection comes less from Chinese diplomatic manoeuvring on Nepal’s behalf than from the structural reality that both of Nepal’s giant neighbours treat it as secondary to their bilateral relationship — and that Kathmandu has limited leverage to change that.