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A journey to remember across China

Pallavi Aiyar

The feeling of being part of history in the making forms a common bond among the passengers of the Beijing-Lhasa train.

THE TRAIN pulled out of Beijing West railway station illuminated by the flash of dozens of cameras trying to capture the image for posterity. On board, the excitement amongst the 850-odd passengers was palpable. Forty-eight hours later the train would create history once it had wound its way up to the roof of the world. For the passengers, this would be a journey to regale grandchildren with for years to come.

The first-ever Beijing-Lhasa Express left Beijing at 9.30 p.m. on July 1 and will arrive in Lhasa at 9 p.m. on July 3. It will run on the highest and longest highland railroad the world has seen. But it is more than just an engineering marvel.

By connecting Tibet to the rest of China, the train will bring about profound transformations to this remote region. Economically a host of opportunities will open up. According to official Chinese estimates, the railway will help double Tibet's tourism revenues by 2010 and reduce transport costs for goods in the region by 75 per cent.

However, there have also been worries voiced that this opening up will have destructive consequences for Tibetan culture and society.

Li Dan, a 27-year-old student from Jilin University, who is on board the train, is dismissive of these criticisms. "Tibet cannot remain isolated and shut off from the world forever. It's not healthy for any culture and change is not in itself bad," she says energetically, during an early morning conversation at the washbasin when this correspondent is still bleary eyed and busy squeezing out toothpaste on to a waiting brush.

There are more than 150 journalists from China and abroad travelling on the train. All the carriages are interconnected giving camera-wielding scribes free access to the 500 or so unsuspecting tourists who are also on board. But the feeling of being part of history in the making forms a common bond and usually reticent Chinese are bubbling over with opinions and comments, as I discover while brushing my teeth.

The train itself is divided into three classes: soft sleeper, hard sleeper, and soft seats. Journalists are housed in hard sleeper — six to a coupe in Indian three-tier-style. Every bunk has a special Oxygen outlet to allow passengers who may suffer high altitude sickness an extra supply. Additional oxygen will also be pumped through the train from a central air-conditioning-like system along the 1,142-kilometre stretch from Golmud in Qinghai province to Lhasa — most of which is more than 4,000 metres above sea level.

Excited tourists

Large portions of the conversations amongst the excited first-time tourists to Tibet revolve around the possibilities of getting altitude sickness and ways of avoiding it. Recorded announcements on the P.A. system constantly replay warnings to contact rail staff in case any passenger begins to feel uncomfortable.

Everyone seems to swear by a Tibetan concoction called Hong Qing Tian, which unblocks the user's "Qi" with ostensibly wholesome results. Menaced by images of cerebral edema, this correspondent becomes an instant convert and starts off on a six-day course of Qi unblocking.

Day One of the trip sees the train winding its way south to Henan and Shanxi provinces and then west to the home of the Gobi desert — Gansu. The journey's most stunning scenery is reserved for day two when the Golmud-Lhasa stretch will take passengers through the highest point on the trip: the 5,072-metre-high Tanggula pass. The pass is part of the formidable Kunlun range of mountains, for long considered impenetrable.

The range forms the northern flank of a huge area of permafrost that stretches for hundreds of kilometres across the Tibetan plateau towards the Himalayas. Above the permafrost is a layer of ice that melts and refreezes daily with the rising and setting of the sun. Laying railroads through such terrain was thought to be impossible until China took up the challenge five years ago.

Chinese engineers have solved the problem by developing a technique that enables them to permanently freeze the top level of ice and prevent it from its daily pattern of melting and refreezing. Coolants are pumped into the earth ensuring that the ground near tunnels and pillars remains frozen.

There has been a certain amount of international scepticism regarding the sustainability of this solution and some have even predicted that the railroad will collapse within ten years. The Chinese authorities, however, maintain that they are confident of their technology.

Flagging off the first train from Golmud to Lhasa, which left on Saturday morning, President Hu Jintao made a speech urging people to "learn from the spirit of the Qinghai-Lhasa railway." A railway engineer aboard the Beijing-Lhasa train earnestly explains to me that Mr. Hu was referring to the spirit of "meeting even impossible challenges." For the Chinese passengers on the train there is a definite self-congratulatory air. "We can do anything we put our mind to," says one beaming journalist from China Central Television.

The destruction that the railway may cause to the pristine environment of the Tibetan plateau, home to the endangered Tibetan antelope, and the new health risks that Tibetans may now be exposed to are not much discussed.

For the passengers it is the thrill of making what for most is their first trip to Tibet, coupled with marvel over the possibility of making this trip at all, that is foremost in their mind.

At every stop on the first leg of the journey — Shijiazhang the grimy capital of Henan, Xian home to the famous Terracotta Warriors, and Lanzhou, the gateway to the Gobi desert — the train is greeted by a gaggle of local journalists. The platforms are unusually clean and bustle free. No-littering rules are strictly enforced. The stops are between 10 and 15 minutes long and the train's strict timetable is kept to the minute.

Back aboard the train, this correspondent watches the passing scenes with languid pleasure: green fields, snaking rivers, dusty villages. But Day One has only been an appetiser. The visual spectacle the second day promises is the gourmet main course that still lies ahead.

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