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Travel times slashed

Tourists chat with a Tibetan boy on a train from Lhasa to Nagqu on the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Wang Zhuangfei / China Daily

Things changed when the road was asphalted, cutting the journey time by half. "Driving on the new road means the journey is no longer such a tiring experience," he said.

The upgraded transportation infrastructure has also benefited Gelek Gyatso, a senior monk at Lingbu Monastery in Gyangze county.

The monastery is on the top of a hill, and the only access to the main road was previously via a narrow dirt path that was unable to accommodate cars. Every time Gelek Gyatso and the other monks returned from a nearby town with a carload of groceries, they had to carry the goods up the hill themselves.

"We dropped the goods at the foot of the hill and then walked up to the top. We had to walk back and forth several times to carry all the items to the monastery. Each load took 30 to 40 minutes to transport," he said.

In 2011, the local government invested 2.6 million yuan ($460,000) to build a 2.5-km-long paved road connecting the monastery with the main road. It now takes about five minutes to drive between the two.

According to Tsering Nyodrub, head of the United Front Work Department in Gyangze, monasteries are usually built on hills, and that makes traveling difficult for monks and pilgrims. Since 2011, the regional government has invested about 1.5 million yuan in the construction of roads near monasteries and other religious sites. The five-year road-building project aims to make 70 percent of the region's 1,700 registered monasteries accessible by the end of the year.