The first train from Lhasa Railway Station in Tibet yesterday. Photo: AP (click on photo to enlarge)
This train journey should have been a dream journey of a lifetime…Alas! It is mired in a major controversy…
The rail link to Lhasa, the capital of China’s Tibet region, makes it possible to travel from Beijing to Lhasa by train in just 48 hours (and just imagine for a moment the fabulous landscape unfolding in front of your eyes!!!) Three types of train tickets are available at different prices for a journey of 4,064 kilometers (?) from Beijing to Lhasa, says Xinhua.
The basic coach ticket, called a hard seat, sells for 389 yuan(48.6 U.S. dollars) from Beijing to Lhasa, while the price for hard sleeper or bunk costs 813 yuan (101.6 dollars), and the price for a shared compartment or soft sleeper is 1,262 yuan (157.75 dollars).
For the Tibetan people who have been fending off Chinese cultural and political infringements since they lost their independence, the iron tracks mean something quite different, says a report in the Los Angeles Times.
“The inaugural journey for the world’s highest railway began today, a technological feat improving China’s access to one of the most forbidding corners of the Earth.
“The quest to link China to the snow-covered plateaus of Tibet, known as the roof of the world, had been a dream of Chairman Mao’s that dates back five decades.
“Technical difficulties in laying tracks over frozen mountain paths and on oxygen-starved peaks made it an impossible task at the time. But the Chinese government took up the challenge about five years ago and turned it into the centerpiece of a new drive to modernize western China.
” ‘The Chinese see it as a great technical achievement. We see it as a very sad moment in our history,’ said Tsering Jampa, a Tibetan who fled her homeland with her family after the 1959 uprising and now works as executive director of the Netherlands-based International Campaign for Tibet. ‘It’s the final nail on the coffin to bring Tibet under Chinese control.’
To pacify potential local opposition, Beijing has been drumming up support for the new train and touting its ability to bring progress to the poor ethnic enclave.
” ‘Tibetan culture needs to move forward and spread, and to do that it needs contact,’ said Zhu Zhensheng, vice director of the Railway Ministry’s Tibetan Railway Office, at a news conference this week in Beijing. ‘I’m sure that an isolated setting doesn’t help a culture to develop.’
China’s move to ensure greater connectivity with Tibet and Sikkim raises many questions, says a columnist in Indian Express.
“The Chinese have never hidden the political purpose underlyig the Tibet railway project.
“The completion of 1,142-km mammoth railway line to Lhasa, built with Russian scientists, marks the last phase of Beijing’s permanent solution to its Tibet problem.
“It is expected to dramatically change the face of Tibet—not only by tightening China’s grip and quelling dissents—but also unleashing a wave of Han migration to the region.
“With 12 per cent economic growth in 2002, Tibet is already a hot investment destination for the Chinese entrepreneurs. In turn, the Chinese hope that that the railway will help speedy assimilation of ethnic Tibetans into the Chinese mainstream. In past, hordes of settlers had swamped other minority regions and effectively Sinocized Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang.
“The Chinese, however, remain wary of sabotaging by extremists apart from permafrost threatening security of 1,000-km rail line. It is not widely known, but already, over 100 Lhasa-bound trucks from Sichuan are ambushed by Tibetan radicals every year. In fact, the Chinese staged anti-terror manouvres in Tibet last year to deal with terrorist acts, explosions and hijackings.
“The railway will feed into the new Tibet-Nepal highway and now to Nathu La, that will provide China full access to Indian subcontinent. The road reopening after 44 years will bring Chinese goods to Siliguri (India) corridor for onward distribution.”
Meanwhile as Tibetan activists call for a boycott of China’s controversial railway to Tibet, the Dalai Lama (now living in exile in India) has urged Tibetans to “wait and see” what benefits the new line might bring to them, a spokesman for the Tibetan spiritual leader said on Wednesday.
The Dalai Lama welcomes the building of the world’s highest railway, “conditioned on the fact that the railroad will bring benefit to the majority of Tibetans,” said Thubten Samphel, the information secretary for the Central Tibetan Administration (Dharamsala, India).
Dalai Lama and President George Bush.
“We would need to wait and see what use the Chinese authorities make of the railway line,” Thubtan Samphel told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
For more on Dalai Lama please visit here.
A Dalai Lama quote: “In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.”
In 1989, Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
On June 22, 2006, the Parliament of Canada voted unanimously to make Tenzin Gyatso (Dalai Lama) an Honorary Citizen of Canada. It is the third time in history that the Government of Canada has bestowed this honour.
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.