An Khe Pass

People crossed An Khe Pass on foot for hundreds of years before anyone laid asphalt there. In those days there were no guardrails and no cars. There were only feet, loads carried on shoulders, and a long, steep trail winding through thick forest.

The pass is the gateway from the coastal lowlands of Bình Định up to the Gia Lai plateau. It lies on National Highway 19, and anyone who travels by road from Quy Nhơn to Pleiku has to cross it. The pass also has more than one name.

In the language of the Bahnar Ala Kông people, it is called Mang. The name means something like a gate, a way from the coastal plain up into the mountains. The land on either side explains it. Mountains stand close on both sides, the road climbs and twists, and then the view suddenly opens wide. It feels exactly like stepping through a door.

Another old name for the pass is Vĩnh Viễn. It appears in records that the Gia Lai newspaper takes from the writer Quách Tấn. Old names for spots on the trail include the Chàng Hảng slope and the bend at the starfruit tree. Others are the bend at the ké tree and an ancient cầy tree. None of them has a marked place on today's map. Still, they show that travelers long ago held on to small marks of nature to find their way over a long and tiring pass.

Before the road took the form of Highway 19, the way over the pass was a narrow trail, steep and stony, with dense forest all around. Every crossing was a real test. Goods went up from the lowlands into the highlands, and Gia Rai and Bahnar people came down to trade local products with the Kinh on the plain. All of it passed this way. The Gia Rai are one of the peoples of Vietnam's Central Highlands. The Kinh are the majority ethnic group of Vietnam. The pass belonged to an old network for exchanging local goods.

But the pass was more than a trading road. The An Khê area on its inner side is an important part of Tây Sơn Thượng Đạo. This land is tied to the early years of the Tây Sơn brothers, when they gathered followers and built a base. The Tây Sơn were three brothers who led an uprising from 1771 and for a time ruled Vietnam.

The Gia Lai newspaper records three clusters of sites at An Khê that belong to the Tây Sơn Thượng Đạo Special National Monument. The sites include one called Cây Ké Waving the Flag and one called Cây Cầy Beating the Drum. In all, the group at An Khê has 18 sites. They were recognized as a national historic and cultural monument in 1991.

Crossing the pass means more than crossing a stretch of land. It means passing over one layer of the history of central Vietnam and the Central Highlands. From here inward lies Tây Sơn land, the land of people who made one of the best-known uprisings in Vietnamese history.

Records also tie the area around the pass to many events of the war. One was a battle in April 1972 at Hill 638, also called Hòn Bùi.

Today the pass has been upgraded. A widening project 17 kilometers long has been completed and opened to traffic. The road is wider, the asphalt smooth, and white guardrails run along the mountainside. But the lie of the mountains, the direction of the wind, and the wide view that opens when the summit comes into sight are the same as hundreds of years ago.

From the summit, the An Khê valley spreads out to the west beneath the clouds, where the Tây Sơn once raised their flag, beat the drum, and gathered their fighters. Far to the east lies the blue haze of the Bình Định coast. Two worlds, one gate. The pass still stands there quietly, joining the two sides as it did before it had a name.