Chinese tourists flocking to holy sites in Tibet

LHASA, China — Three crimson-robed monks chant quietly as they file through the ancient palace, pausing every now and then to pray in the candlelit rooms filled with Buddhist statues and religious murals.

At the Potala Palace, the mountaintop Tibetan landmark where the Dalai Lama lived until he fled to India in 1959 to escape Chinese control, they are in the minority.

A year-old rail line linking Lhasa, capital of the remote Himalayan region of Tibet, with the rest of China has brought a deluge of Chinese tourists. Once quiet, holy sites are now filled with sightseers, many of them trailing behind guides loudly explaining their cultural significance.

"In the past, this was a very comfortable place to come for Buddhists. You could see a lot of lamas and Tibetans in this place, and it made you feel like this was a place for your faith," monk Renzin Gyaltso said as he strolled down a stone path at the Potala Palace.

Tibet's Buddhist culture, often besieged in the past half-century of Chinese rule by religious restrictions and communist political movements, is facing a new threat: mass tourism.

Pilgrimages to sacred sites are an integral part of Tibetan Buddhism. Renzin Gyaltso, 29, has visited the sprawling Potala Palace 14 times since joining a monastery as a small boy.

"Now I feel sad when I come here because I cannot see any good people, I can't see any people wearing lama robes. You can't see anything special, they all look the same," he said of the tourists, dressed in fleece jackets and sneakers.

The Dalai Lama has warned that Tibet's religion and culture are imperiled as he travels the world meeting heads of state and drawing harsh rebukes from China.

"Every year, the Chinese population inside Tibet is increasing at an alarming rate. And if we are to judge by the example of the population of Lhasa, there is a real danger that the Tibetans will be reduced to an insignificant minority in their own homeland," he said when accepting the U.S. Congress' highest civilian honor in October.

Few government plans have succeeded in bringing Chinese to Tibet like the "Sky Train," which has become a popular alternative to expensive flights or long, bone-crunching bus rides.

Beijing wanted to build a railway to Tibet for decades but was put off by engineering challenges. The project launched in earnest in 2001, and the train began running in July 2006, on a specially designed track to protect the delicate permafrost that lies under much of the last third of the rail line.