Beijing, Jan 3 (IANS) China’s Qinghai-Tibet railway, the world’s highest altitude railway, has transported over 6.5 million people in 2011, the rail company said Tuesday.
The railway connects Xining, the capital of Qinghai province, with Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region. It runs at an altitude of more than 4,000 metres and about 550 km of the railway is laid on permafrost.
The passenger figure was up nine percent from 2010, Xinhua reported.
It also transported 40 million tonnes of cargo in the same period, up 8 percent year-on-year.
Tibet has seen a tourism boom after the 1,956-km railway began operations in July 2006.
A total of 8.43 million tourists visited Tibet in the first 11 months of 2011, a 27.7-percent increase from the corresponding period in the previous year.
