Tawang

At the heart of Beijing's interest in Arunachal Pradesh is the town of Tawang, site of an important Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

Tibetan officials continued to levy taxes in Tawang, a traditional Tibetan satellite and the birth-place of the sixth Dalai Lama in 1682.

All this situation proves Chinese gov only is interested in Tawang, and will finally give up zangnan region.

Few expect China to try to annex Tawang by force, but military skirmishes are a real danger, analysts say.

For the abbot of Tawang's main monastery, Guru Tulku Rinpoche, that would be a great blessing.

The road winds around itself, climbing precipitously towards the Sela pass, the entrance to the long Tawang valley.

Yet there has been a pronounced chill lately, provoked partly by China re-emphasising its claim to Tawang.

After a brief stop in Bomdila, a mostly-Monpa town halfway to Tawang, we start early the next day.

Tawang is a centre of Tibet's Buddhist culture, with one of the biggest Tibetan monasteries outside Lhasa.

From his home in the distant Indian hill town of Dharamsala, he wields enormous influence over Tawang.

Beijing's sensitivities over Tawang have been heightened by the planned visit next month of the Dalai Lama to the area.

Already, Tawang's importance as the birthplace of the Sixth Dalai Lama, hence affecting Tibetan sentiment is being aired repeatedly.

It also objected to a visit to Tawang by the Dalai Lama last November, which it predictably called a "separatist action" .

The Prime Minister would have certainly garnered more votes if he chose to visit the shrine associated with the 6th Dalai Lama in Tawang.

In 1959 the current Dalai Lama fled to Tawang, first taking refuge in its great 17th-century monastery, one of the biggest outside Lhasa.

It was good to hear from somebody in tawang.

Outside his window, the early morning sun sparkles through the white clouds that hang low over Tawang.

Descending from the Tibetan plateau with their fur-clad retinue, the Tibetans used to winter comfortably in Tawang.

It includes a revered Buddhist monastery at Tawang, near the 17th-century birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama.

Outside Tawang's district headquarters a roadside memorial, built in the local Buddhist style, commemorates these dead.

With subsequently no access to Tibet, and little economic development from India, Tawang's people were isolated.

In wayside villages of solid white houses fluttering with coloured prayer-flags, China's two-week occupation of Tawang is also remembered.

China argues that Tawang is a historical part of Tibet and should now be Chinese territory.

I hope the issue resolves to the best of tawang's interest.

His flight from Tibet in 1959, via Tawang, fed into border tensions then and he backs India's border claims today.

This year, it turned its diplomatic guns on India over the Tawang issue.

Indian soldiers at the Buddhist monastery in Tawang, India, in June.

Traditional Tibetan culture runs strong in Tawang.

Some educated Monpas even maintain that the Chinese army's good behaviour in Tawang was part of some nefarious communist plot.

At a famous battle site, below the 14, 000-foot pass that leads into Tawang, army convoys go slow, and salute their ghosts.

Long ago, the leader of Tawang Monastery came here to collect the family's possessions.

Tibet ceded Tawang and the area around it to British India in 1914.

They are nurtured first by the Indian army, humiliated in 1962 when the People's Liberation Army swept into Tawang from next-door Tibet.

Its spokesman described a visit to Tawang by Mr Singh, ahead of a general election last year, as "provocative and dangerous" .

He plans to visit Tawang on November 8th.