Free oxygen at 19,024 ft! Welcome to world’s highest Oxygen Café at Umling La
The café serves as a crucial rest point where visitors can check their oxygen saturation levels and receive immediate assistance.
The café, constructed on the Guinness World Record- holding Umling La road also built by the BRO, has been recognised by the Guinness Book for its unique location and purpose. (Photo: Psychicchap)
Ladakh, Aug 21: Ladakh's Umling La, the world's highest motorable pass at 19,024 feet, houses the world's highest Oxygen Café, a life-saving initiative of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) that offers free oxygen to tourists and soldiers battling thin air near the India-China border.
The café, constructed on the Guinness World Record- holding Umling La road also built by the BRO, has been recognised by the Guinness Book for its unique location and purpose. The feat was achieved under Project Himank, the BRO's specialised initiative launched in 1985 to construct and maintain roads in some of the world's toughest and highest-altitude terrain.
Over the decades, Project Himank has delivered several engineering milestones in Ladakh, and the Umling La Pass road has not only strengthened strategic connectivity but also given a major boost to high- altitude tourism.
At Umling La, oxygen levels are nearly half of what is available at sea level, making the environment extremely challenging for unacclimatised travellers. The café serves as a crucial rest point where visitors can check their oxygen saturation levels and receive immediate assistance in case of altitude- related emergencies. To further ensure safety, medical inspection (MI) rooms and oxygen stations have also been established at Umling La and other high passes.
"At Umling La, you are hardly able to breathe. So we have established oxygen cafés to help people in distress," a senior BRO officer explained. "We've also set up MI rooms for emergencies. Adventurous travellers-bikers, trekkers also visit these heights, and they must be cared for. At these altitudes, oxygen is the most important thing. We check SPO levels if it drops be- low 85, it's a critical situation that needs immediate attention, and oxygen cylinders are brought into action."
BRO officials said the Oxygen Café is part of its broader effort to blend strategic infrastructure with humanitarian support and tourism promotion in some of India's most remote border regions. The Umling La road itself had earlier surpassed Khardung La to earn the Guinness World Record as the highest motorable road in the world. With the new café, the BRO has added an- other dimension to that achievement, combining engineering marvel with a vital lifeline for those venturing into one of the planet's harshest environments.