Diminutive Amar Bahadur Gurung is a postman with a difference. The 50-plus Gurung is perhaps the only runner to cross an international border, that, too, at an altitude of over 14,000 feet, to exchange mailbags. Twice a week, Gurung unites relatives separated by Sikkim's Indo-Tibet border. Under an agreement between the Indian and Chinese governments in 1992, a programme on the transfer of mail across the Indo-Tibet border was introduced. The programme was implemented at the Nathu La border post, located at an altitude of 14,500 feet, some 53 km east of Gangtok, on the erstwhile silk trade route between the Sikkim capital and Lhasa. At the crack of dawn every Thursday and Sunday, Gurung puts on his postal department's uniform and traverses the five-km stretch between Sherathang and the Nathu La border pass to cross over into Tibet with the official sanction of both the Indian and Chinese authorities. Braving wind velocity averaging over 80 knots and heavy snow, Gurung crosses over a strand of barbed wire that separates the two countries and enters a concrete shed on the Chinese side. Inside the shed, Gurung hands over a mailbag to his Chinese counterpart. Hardly a word is exchanged and the operation lasts three minutes. The ritual is repeated every Sunday with the Chinese postman from the Tibetan village of Yathung crossing over into India to hand over mail bags inside a two-storeyed conference hall. Gurung, a resident of Sherathang, one of the few villages dotting the eastern tip of the Indo-Tibet-Bhutan tri-junction, is happy with the job he is so committed to. 'Be it snow or rain, I have to trudge up the five-km stretch from Sherathang to Nathu La as no civilian is permitted to reside near the border pass. Once at the border post, it is a short process. We just exchange the bags and leave the shed. There is hardly any chance of any conversation,' he says. Gurung's only regret is that the post and telegraph department has still not made him a permanent staff. 'Despite rendering such selfless service over the years, I have not yet being absorbed into permanent service. The only facility that I have been provided with is an official quarters behind the Sherathang post office,' he says. The Nathu La post commander said people living in the border villages such as Sherathang, Kupup and Khangkhosla benefit from the mail exchange programme as they are mostly of Tibetan origin. 'For security reasons, all letters exchanged through the border are first vetted at the postal research centre in Siliguri,' an army official says. 'If not for the programme,' explains Gurung, 'letters would have taken months to reach their destinations on either side.' Before the mail-exchange programme was started, letters, after being posted in Sikkim, would have reached Yathung after travelling through Delhi, Hong Kong, Beijing and Lhasa.