A tribute to Motilal Lakhotia, the man who took cars to Tibet on mules, yaks

If Baker’s Cafe existed in the 1950s at Gangtok’s MG Marg, you would find a Studebaker parked right outside. A young suited man in a red tie and spotless white shirt would be sharing with you stories of having exported Norton Bikes to Tibet, all the way from Great Britain. You may have met Motilal Lakhotia, the man who traded with Tibet, with People’s Republic of China and lived to celebrate Christmas amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

He breathed his last on Boxing Day, 2020, at the age of 95. And with Lakhotia went a legend who revolutionized the Old Silk Route trade with Tibet through Sikkim. Among the few who can claim that they collectively started MG Marg, ‘Motila’ as he was called by the Tibetans, was a magician who could dismantle and then reassemble Ambassador cars, Jeeps and Fiats carried on mules and yaks to the Forbidden Kingdom before roads even existed.

These were the times when reaching Calcutta from Gangtok was a milestone. Trade was a distant cousin who never visited beyond the groceries and meat, and shipment was nothing that River Teesta had ever heard of. Yet, there were those who came from far west, Churu, Chubkiya in Rajasthan around 1910s. Motilal, born in Gangtok in 1925, couldn’t earn the privilege of seeing his father Gopalchand Lakhotia as an old man. At 11, he gave up schooling from ‘High Secondary’, started selling milk along with his mother Mohra Devi, from their cowshed in MG Marg.