Holidays in Tibet

Press, 23 October 1984, Page 13

Holidays in Tibet

China plans to boost tourism in Tibet in a bid to lure 100,000 visitors a year to one of the world’s most inaccessible places by the year 2000, the China “Daily” reports. Tibet, now an autonomous region of China, sometimes known as the “Roof of the World” because of its high plateaux and rugged mountains, has an average altitude of 4500 metres. Jiachan, at 4761 metres, is thought to be the highest inhabited town on Earth, writes Pierre-Antoine Donnet of Agence France-Press from Peking. About 2000 people annually visit Tibet, a thinly populated region twice the size of France that was under a theocratic Lamaist Buddhist rule when China reasserted control over it in 1951. The annual number of visitors to

Tibet is expected to rise to 6000 by 1986 and 50,000 by 1990, largely due to an ambitious hotel construction programme, the “Daily” says. The regional government also intends to open new cities to foreign travellers, including Shigatse, Tibet’s second largest city, Burang, and Zetang. Gyanze City, 50 kilometres from the border with Bhutan, and Nyalam, a town near the border with Nepal, are also to be opened to foreign visitors. Currently, only the capital city of Lhasa, perched at nearly 3700 metres between two mountain ranges, is officially open to visitors, who usually must pay more than $lO,OOO to gain entry to the city’s Buddhist monasteries and monuments. The local authorities hope that revenue from tourism will bring in

$l7O million annually by the year 2000, China “Daily” says. Foreign visitors going to Tibet must first undergo a “physical check” in Peking, the “Daily” adds. Once in Lhasa, more than 3000 kilometres from Peking, tourists often have to spend a day or so adapting to the altitude and lack of oxygen, which creates headaches and dizziness. Tourist accommodation in Tibet is also a problem. Facilities are far from adequate as hotels are virtually non-existant. The only tourist hotel in Lhasa can take only 80 people. One 200-bed hotel now being built in Lhasa is due for completion in 1985 and construction on five more hotels is to start the same year. a