Tue, 20 Sep 2005
Railway to Tibet
The railway connecting Lhasa, Tibet with China will soon be completed. The railway has been praised as a feat of engineering and condemned as endangering what is left of Tibetan culture. Guardian reporter Jonathan Watts rides the nearly completed Tibetan rail line and reports on its significance.
They said it was impossible to build a railway to Tibet. There were 5,000m-high mountains to climb, 12km-wide valleys to bridge, hundreds of kilometres of ice and slush that could never support tracks and trains. How could anyone tunnel through rock at -30C, or lay rails when the least exertion sends you reaching for the oxygen bottle? But that's the sort of challenge today's China relishes. Next month, three years ahead of schedule, more than 1,000km of fresh track will link the garrison town of Golmud in China's 'wild west' and the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, strengthening the regime's grip on this troublesome corner of the empire and confirming its status as a technological superpower.
