Source: Xinhua

04-21-2008 16:12

By Kaushik Mitter, The Asian Age India

Lhasa (Tibet), Aug. 7 -- As the 30-hour-long train ride from Lanzhou in the heart of western China, traversing almost 2,000 km across the Gobi Desert and then the plateau known as the Roof of the World, finally rolled into the Tibetan capital's spanking new railway station on the dot of 10.30 pm Sunday, and the brilliantly-lit Potala Palace shimmered magically in the night sky on the short journey into town, the buzz in this modern city once fabled as Shangri-La appeared to be centred around Nathu-La, and what the reopening of that pass signified for Tibet's new place in the sun.

Liu Hui, of the Foreign Cultural Exchange Association of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, acknowl-edged as much at his welcome dinner for a visiting delegation of Indian journalists on Monday evening, when he talked about the excitement generated by the reopening of Nathu-La for border trade just five days after the first train of the Qinghai-Tibet railway rolled into Lhasa on July 1. The Nathu-La Pass is just a little over five hours' drive from this city, and there is a lot of speculation about when travel and tourism between India and Tibet will become easier as a result.

The reality, of course, is that the pass has just been opened for limited border trade, and even preliminary negotiations are yet to begin between New Delhi and Beijing about the movement of people, tourists or other-wise, across this land route. The defence authorities in India have expressed a number of fears centred around security if free movement of people is permitted across this pass.

But however long it takes, the excitement is quite evident here, and more among some ordinary citizens than Chinese officialdom. A young monk at the historic Jokhang Monastery (a stone's throw away from Potala), Tashi Tsering (name changed on request), became quite animated on discovering that this correspondent was an Indian from New Delhi, and, moving away from the accompanying Chinese interpreter, said in broken English how much he hoped to be able to cross the Nathu-La Pass and revisit Dharamshala, where he had been as a child, and also fulfil a long-held dream of going to Rumtek (monastery) in Sikkim. Just outside the Jokhang, in the bustling Barkhor Square, a stallholder hawking incense sticks made in Bangalore (who also sought anonymity) had no such communication problems and in a mixture of Hindi and English spoke fondly of his days in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Dharamshala, and said that read-ing about Nathu-La had raised his hopes that he could one day go back for a visit to India.