The historic first train from Beijing to Lhasa crossed its highest point Monday at the Tanggula pass on the Tibetan plateau, 5,072 meters (16,737 feet) above sea level.
However passengers, already 37 hours into their 48-journey, were mostly too lethargic and concerned about fighting off altitude sickness to mark the event around midday with too much revelry. Many in fact were sleeping while other passengers had stuck tubes into their nostrils to breathe in extra oxygen, despite the cabins already being pressurised.
The Tanggula pass is the peak of what is now the world's highest railway, surpassing Peru's Lima-Huancayo line, which reaches 4,800 meters. Upon arriving at the western-Chinese outpost of Golmud in Qinghai province early Monday morning, three supplementary engines were added to help the train surmount the Himalayan heights.
The Qinghai to Tibet leg of the railway opened for service on Saturday with a train running the over 1,100 kilometers (680 miles) from Golmud to the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.
However the passengers who boarded the train from Beijing, including 40 foreign journalists accompanied by government minders, on Saturday night were the first ones to be travelling all the way from the Chinese capital.
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