Height of ambition

A mission impossible

However, every time he traveled back to Balha village, he was always sad to hear stories of villagers' mules and horses, laden with goods, falling off the narrow road into the Gangqu River.

In 1997, Zhongdian, considered to be the mysterious land described in James Hilton's Lost Horizon, was renamed Shangri-La. At the end of 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people arrived looking for its fabled landscape. This inspired Sonam Dondrup, who, having visited many places around the world, knew that his hometown by the mountain was unusually beautiful.

"The altitude rises from 2,000 meters above the sea level to 5,545 meters, so that we have a 'three-dimensional' ecosystem and tourists can see incredible views at different altitudes," he says.

Without a proper road, the 1,300-year-old village's traditions and customs remained intact, and are the soul of the snow mountain, he adds.

He says he believed that with a tourist park, villagers could live a more financially secure life, and such development would not destroy the environment.

"Reasonable development should be allowed, because it's people's basic right to live a comparatively comfortable life," he says.

In the park, people can admire the scenery but not take anything away except their memories, he says.

In 1999, he set off on the long hard journey to pursue his dream. He registered Balha Kardzong Tourist Development Co and told his family that he was going to build a concrete road that would connect Balha village with the No 214 National Highway using his own savings. This was greeted by raised eyebrows and no little mocking from not only his family and friends, but also other villagers. "Sonam Dondrup is mad," they said.

However, the bigger barriers were yet to come. It took one year for the local government to approve the proposal. Then came the assessment of the development plan.

After eight days of investigation, experts decided that the Balha village was a beautiful place without any pollution. Building a road on the cliffs was a mission impossible, they believed, not to mention that the construction would unavoidably damage the natural environment.

But Sonam Dondrup was nothing if not strong-minded.

"I want to ask you (experts): Are you going back home on foot or by car? Do you use electricity at home? Do you watch TV? But we don't even have a road, not to mention lighting and TV," he said to the assessors.

Three years passed before the plan was finally approved in 2004.But it came with one condition: The development must keep environmental impact to a minimum.

"Which was the fundamental principle we followed when building the road or developing the tourist park," he says.

To avoid damaging the natural flora, Sonam Dondrup designed 52 turns on the 35 km road, many of which exceed 90 degrees. Once, he fined the construction team 25,000 yuan for felling a tree without authorization.

There were other difficulties-funding, construction and land acquisition. He was not only trying to persuade banks to lend him money, but also confronted with the problem that designers and the construction teams were reluctant, with good reason, to work on steep cliffs.

As a result, he spent two years leading a team to survey the topography, spending many days and nights in the valleys and on the cliffs.

The project finally kicked off on Sept 10, 2004. However, the construction was often stopped by villagers who did not want their precious land to be used by the road.

Sonam Dondrup knocked on their doors one by one but was always rejected. Once an old woman came out and before he opened his mouth, she spat on his face and cursed: "You fraud! You want to steal our land."

"Villagers' misunderstanding was the biggest difficulty for me," he says. After many rounds of negotiation, he finally reached agreement with the villagers.

However, loans from banks ran out very quickly, and he had to sell his restaurant, hardware and machinery store, house and car, but still he owed a debt of 100 million yuan, so he had to hide from his creditors and was mocked by the villagers who declared "Sonam Dondrup is the No 1 idiot".