Tibet's mountain highway readies for Olympic spectacle

By Nick Mulvenney

LHATSE, China (Reuters) - A journey on Tibet's "Friendship Highway" is a tightly controlled reminder of the tensions and anxieties that China hopes to push aside as the Olympic Games torch passes through here in coming weeks.

The government is still clearly worried after last month's riots in the Tibetan capital Lhasa sparked the biggest protests against Chinese rule for decades.

A party of foreign reporters in Tibet to prepare for the torch relay leg up Mount Everest in May -- only the second foreign reporting group allowed in since the riots in mid-March -- were whisked by officials from Lhasa airport to Shigatse, the region's second city.

The highway winds its way across the mountainous Tibetan plateau from Lhasa to the Himalayan border with Nepal, passing through Shigatse, about 300 km (190 miles) west of Lhasa, and then Lhatse, which is about 160 km further along.

Shigatse is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, the Tibet Buddhist leader through which China has claimed religious credibility for its rule since his counterpart, the Dalai Lama, fled to India in 1959.

"We respect the Panchen Lama more than the Dalai Lama here," 26-year-old monk Nyma Dundrop told reporters at the Tsam Monastery, perched above the main Shigatse-Lhatse road at 4,500 metres (14,850 feet) above sea level. "And we feel free in religion."

The 1,000-year-old monastery displayed several portraits of the 10th Panchen Lama, a popular figure who died in 1989, and he was much more in evidence than the current 11th Panchen, controversially chosen with the backing of Beijing.

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