Arrange the following passes from West to East direction: 1. Bara Lacha La 2. Shipki La 3. Jelep La 4. Bomdi La Select the correct answer using the code given below.

Correct — A, 1-2-3-4. Take the four passes by longitude. Bara Lacha La lies in Lahaul in Himachal Pradesh, on the Manali-Leh road, at roughly 77 degrees east — the westernmost of the four. Shipki La is also in Himachal Pradesh but further east, in Kinnaur, at about 78 and a half degrees east; it is the gap through which the Sutlej enters India. Jelep La is a long way east of both, on the Sikkim-Tibet border near the Chumbi valley, at about 88 and three-quarter degrees east. Bomdi La is further east again, in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, at about 92 degrees east. So the west-to-east order runs Bara Lacha La, Shipki La, Jelep La, Bomdi La, which is the order the passes are already numbered in — 1-2-3-4.

• (b)1-3-2-4 — This puts Jelep La, in Sikkim, ahead of Shipki La, in Himachal Pradesh. Sikkim lies about ten degrees of longitude east of Kinnaur, so the two are the wrong way round.
• (c)2-3-4-1 — This starts at Shipki La and ends at Bara Lacha La, which sends the westernmost pass of the four to the far end of the sequence.
• (d)2-4-3-1 — It carries the same error as (c) — Bara Lacha La placed last — and adds another, putting Bomdi La in Arunachal Pradesh ahead of Jelep La in Sikkim.

Himalayan passes are easiest to order by the State they sit in, because the States themselves run west to east along the range: Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh first, then Uttarakhand, then Nepal, then Sikkim and West Bengal, then Bhutan, then Arunachal Pradesh. A pass inherits the position of its State, so placing the pass on the map is really a question of placing the district.

Two of these four passes sit in Himachal Pradesh and two sit in the eastern Himalaya, which is what makes the item tractable without knowing any longitude. Bara Lacha La and Shipki La are the Himachal pair, and within Himachal, Lahaul is west of Kinnaur. Jelep La and Bomdi La are the eastern pair, and Sikkim is west of Arunachal Pradesh. Put the two pairs in order and the sequence writes itself. The trap the paper sets is that the answer turns out to be the numbers already given — candidates distrust a serial answer and talk themselves into a shuffled option.

• Bara Lacha La lies in Lahaul, Himachal Pradesh, on the Manali-Leh highway, at about 4,890 metres.
• Shipki La lies in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh; the Sutlej enters India through this gap, and it is a designated border-trade point with Tibet.
• Jelep La links Sikkim with the Chumbi valley in Tibet; Nathu La, the pass reopened for trade in 2006, is close by.
• Bomdi La lies in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, the easternmost of the four.
• The Himalayan States run west to east in the order Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, which fixes almost every pass-ordering question.

• Assuming a serial answer must be wrong. Here the passes are already listed from west to east.
• Placing Shipki La in Sikkim because the names sound alike; it is in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh.
• Confusing Jelep La with Nathu La. They are neighbours on the same stretch of the Sikkim-Tibet border, and only Nathu La was reopened for trade.

As a west-to-east or north-to-south ordering, as a pass-to-State match, or as a single question on which pass a named river or trade route uses.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Through which Himalayan pass does the Sutlej enter India?

  • (a)Bara Lacha La
  • (b)Shipki La
  • (c)Jelep La
  • (d)Bomdi La

  Answer(b) Shipki La — the Sutlej crosses into Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh, through this gap.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Bomdi La, one of the passes named in this question, lies in which State?

  • (a)Sikkim
  • (b)Uttarakhand
  • (c)Arunachal Pradesh
  • (d)Himachal Pradesh

  Answer(c) Arunachal Pradesh — it is in West Kameng district, the easternmost of the four passes listed.