Ticket to Lhasa

The recent opening of a rail link into Tibet from China is an incredible feat of engineering traversing as it does at high altitudes the most inhospitable terrain where some areas remain permanently frozen. With a length of 2000 kilometres and over 5000 metres at its highest point it is the world’s longest and highest plateau railway comprising 681 bridges, 1966 culverts and 11 tunnels.

The rail journey starts from Xian, also the start point of the Silk Road, running parallel to the south trail of the ancient road to Xining and Qinghai Lake. Xining is the start of the c.2000km Qingzang rail link to Lhasa. Passing mountains and salt lakes we reach Golmud, also the start point for the long road journey into Tibet. From here the 1142 km section to Lhasa climbs up to Golmud Canyon where the legendary Kunlun Mountains and Jade Peak come into view. Then reaching the areas of the source of China’s great rivers it crosses over Mount Wudaoliang to a green land of enormous lakes that is Kekexili, a protected region with many wild animals including the Tibetan antelope. At 5072 metres pass Mount Tanggula into Tibet passing Nakchu and the Nianqing Tanggular Mountains to reach Lhasa. With an average altitude of almost 5000 metres Tibet is bounded by mountains: the Kunlun to the north, the Karakorams to the west and the jagged peaks of the Himalayas to the south majestically presided over by the soaring bulk of Mount Everest and giving rise to another of its traditional names ‘Land of the Snows’.

Tibet has always exerted a fascination on visitors from the West – partly by its isolation and partly by virtue of the fact that there was no divide between the religious and secular with its unique past a story of a religion rather than a nation. In Lhasa the 1000-room 7th-century Potala Palace is one of the architectural wonders of the world, with 13 levels of red, white and gold while the Jokhang temple is Tibet’s most holy place and the spiritual centre with golden canopies, gilded Banners of Victory and the large gold Wheel of Law.