By Syed Zarir Hussain,

Gangtok, Sep 21 (IANS) India is expected to witness a boom in tourist flow when India and China open the land route through Nathu La pass for tourists in 2011, says a study.

India and China on July 6 reopened trade across the 15,000 ft Nathu La Pass, 52 km east of Sikkim's capital Gangtok, as part of a broader rapprochement. The move marked the first direct trade link between the nuclear-armed neighbours since a bitter border war in 1962.

"The yearly tourist flow to Tibet from mainland China is around three million and a good number of them would like to visit Sikkim and rest of India once the infrastructure on the Indian side is complete. We hope to get an extra 300,000 tourists to Sikkim from the Dragon country," S.K. Sarda, president of the Sikkim Chamber of Commerce, said in a report.

Currently, only traders are allowed to cross the snowy Silk Road mountain pass between India and China for trading.

Trade now takes places four days a week - Monday to Thursday - beginning June 1 each year and lasts until Sep 30 when snow makes the area impassable.

Indian traders are now allowed to sell some select items in the Chinese bazaar of Renqinggang, 17 km from Nathu La, while traders from China cross the rusty barbed wire marker to Sherathang, five km below the pass on the Indian side.

The northeastern Indian state of Sikkim, located in the lap of the Himalayas, gets about 300,000 tourists on an average each year.

"By 2011, tourist inflow to Sikkim would be around 900,000 as it would attract huge number of domestic tourists who would like to use the Nathu La pass to travel to China to visit monasteries and other scenic spots," the Sikkim Chamber of Commerce projection said.

The study also said Indian and Sri Lankan Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims would take the Nathu La pass to visit Mt Kailash and Lake Mansarovar. "The journey to these holy places from the Nathu La route will be more comfortable and less time consuming as compared to the difficult and costly route through Kathmandu in Nepal," the report said.

Although initial trade between the two countries through Nathu La was slow, authorities are optimistic that business would grow from next year once infrastructure arrangements on either side of the border was complete.

"We are positive that trade between India and China would definitely boom," Sikkim Director of Industries Saman Prasad Subba told IANS.

Trade has surged between the neighbours with their combined consumer market of 2.3 billion people. Bilateral trade grew by 37.5 percent to hit 18.73 billion dollars last year, according to Chinese data.

A study conducted by the Sikkim government says bilateral trade after the reopening of the Silk Road was expected to reach $12 billion by 2015.