Click to play videoLhasa: A journey to the top of the world! Heading higher than 5,000 metre, the Qinghai-Tibet railway line is an engineering marvel. But is it an economic boon or a tool to tightening China’s control on Tibet? A year after it was inaugurated, the quest to find answers takes this CNN-IBN correspondent to Beijing’s dazzling railway station.
Of the more than 3 million tourists who visited Tibet last year, 1.2 million took the train. Like the proverbial Chinese cliche, the journey of 4,250 km and 48 hours begins with just one step.
This is a journey this correspondent shared with hundreds of others, mostly Chinese, in a sleeper cabin, while poorer Tibetans travelled sitting up.
“In the past, it wasn't easy for ordinary Chinese people to go to Tibet. Now, I go there for work regularly,” says Tung Dae-Wo, a banker.
Barreling across China at 160 km per hour, the Beijing-Lhasa Express is contributing directly to an economic boom in Tibet and transporting tonnes of much-needed fresh food and consumer goods to the highest plateau.
“There are two sides to this train to Tibet. The positive side is development and the negative side is the environmental and cultural destruction,” says a Buddhist couple on the train.
Government officials say they are replanting trees wherever possible and protecting the top-soil permafrost from the rail line. But as one can see, newer cities are coming up en route and they stand testimony that the changes brought about by the train are irreversible.
On day one, the train travels 3,000 km from Beijing. The next 1,100 km would take another day. This section can give a sense how tough it’s going to get and how the temperature falls as altitude grows.
As the air gets thinner, the atmosphere on board the train gets friendlier. Tibetans, Chinese and Indian visitors find ways to cross the language barrier through Bollywood nostalgia.
Lhasa stands at about 3,700 metres, that's about half-way up Mount Everest. Railway officials keep making announcements telling travellers to slow down, drink lots of water and use oxygen outlets if necessary.
And as one gets closer, it gets more important to keep the blood supply going. And the passengers on the train become more and more excited about getting to the Tibetan capital. “Mountains, river and forests,Happiness is a journey, not a destination. Lhasa is very beautiful,” they would say.
Others grow silent, saying that the holy Buddhist monasteries in Tibet are drawing them to prayer. But with beauty like this, it’s also easy to see the truth of the saying: Happiness is a journey, not a destination.
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