41-year-old Yuan Yong has already been working in Ngari, Tibet Autonomous Region, for 15 years.

However, it wasn’t until recently that he had the chance to return home every year for Spring Festival.

Yuang Yong’s home is in Lingshi County, Jinzhong City of Shanxi Province. It is more than 3,000 kilometers from Lhasa and Lhasa to Ngari is a further 1,700 kilometers.

In July 2000, Yuan Yong was still in his fourth year at university when went to gain some work experience at Tibet Autonomous Region People’s Hospital. In 2001, after graduating from Tibet University for Nationalities, he was assigned to Ngari Prefecture’s People’s Hospital.

Ngari is located in western Tibet at an average altitude of 4,500 meters. It is known as the “top of world roof” and transport infrastructure has always been poor.

Yuan Yong remembers clearly: it was Aug. 29 2001 and he was taking a bus from Lhasa to Ngari.

“We had been going for five days and nights,” he said. The car had broken down in Sangsang Township, Shigatse, at an altitude of 4,500 meters. The temperature at night was bitterly cold reaching lower than minus 10 degrees Celsius; fortunately, a kind-hearted person lent him a quilt so he could get through the night.

It was even harder leaving Ngari as it wasn’t until December 2003 that Yuan Yong left for the first time.

In order to get home early for Spring Festival, he firstly took a bus along the Xinjiang-Tibet Line to Yecheng in Xinjiang . Then, he took a train to Korla, followed by another train to Urumqi and one more to Xi’an. Finally, after eight days, he reached home in Shanxi.

His journey was by no means plane-sailing. On the way to Yecheng the road was a bumpy dirt road and the bus fell into a ditch. Yuan Yong, the other passengers and the driver all stepped out onto the ice to push the bus; despite his frostbitten feet, the bus still wouldn’t budge. It wasn’t until midnight when a large truck passed by that they were able to drag the bus out.

“I never thought that leaving Tibet to return home for Spring Festival after three years would be so difficult,” Yuan Yong said.

 “On arriving home I felt a bit strange. I told mother about the journey home and, as she wiped away the tears, she tried to persuade me come home to work”. Yuan Yong comforted his sad mother by saying how good life in Ngari is.

In 2004 a tarmac road opened on the Lhasa to Ngari southern line. Yuan Yong no longer had to go through Xinjiang on his way home. He could take a bus from Ngari to Lhasa, which shortened the journey from five days and nights to just over 30 hours. Then, he could travel to Xining by car and take the train home. The whole journey was reduced to six days.

In 2006 the Qinghai-Tibet Railway opened making his journey home even more convenient. After taking the bus to Lhasa, he could take the train straight to Xining and then onto Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi. The entire journey had now been reduced to four days.

In 2010 Yuan Yong started traveling home by plane as the air route from Lhasa to Ngari officially opened. Travel time from Ngari to Lhasa was reduced to around two hours, which was then followed by a flight to Taiyuan. The journey was now just over ten hours.  

Yuan Yong, who continues to enjoy the “rewards of transport”, sighs, “In the last ten years there have been rapid changes to transport in Tibet. I can now go home every year for Spring Festival and the journey is more and more comfortable.”

The old notion of “entering and leaving Tibet being difficult” is already history due to development of transport infrastructure in Tibet. Today, Tibet’s civil aviation operates 63 airline routes, 40 of which fly to cities, with a highway mileage of over 70,000 kilometers. The Lhasa-Shigatse Railway is open and construction of the second road into Tibet, the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, is advancing steadily. The picturesque Tibet is no longer far away.