PTI, Beijing :
Chinese officials say trans-Himalayan railway connecting Tibet with India and Nepal is economically and technically feasible as Beijing looks to make Tibet an economic and cultural hub connecting China with South Asia.
“The construction of a railway crossing the Himalayan mountains is now economically and technologically feasible,” Zong Gang, Deputy Director of the Science and Technology Department at Beijing University of Technology, told a forum here run by the China Tibetology Research Centre.
The Himalayan railway would start from Xigaze, a city in Tibet, run to Gyirong, a land port on the Chinese border, and extend into Nepal, although it would not be a high-speed railway, state-run China Daily quoted Chinese researchers as saying at the forum on Thursday.
China built a railway running for more than 1,100 km to connect the highland region of Tibet with the rest of the country in 2006 and extended it to Xigaze with an additional 250-km rail link connecting the city to Tibetan provincial capital Lhasa.
China now mulls a rail link to the both Nepal and Yadong, a Tibetan county close to Sikkim border. Chinese officials say that in future it can be connected to India.
The daily on Friday published a map with railway line linking Xigaze with Yadong and Burang, both closer to Indian borders in Sikkim and Uttarakhand, and Gyirong, bordering Nepal.
The altitude at Gyirong port is 2,800 meters above sea level, while the Gyirong mountain pass to Nepal lies at about 1,800 meters, making the railway geographically feasible, Zong said.
