Special report: Get into Tibet>>>

The Qinghai-Tibet railway, dubbed the railway on the "roof of the world", is proving to be stiff competition for regional bus companies and it's encouraging a lot more people to go home for the Spring Festival holidays.

Some 2,400 to 2,500 people were expected to board the four passenger trains leaving Lhasa on Saturday for Beijing, Shanghai, southwest China's Chongqing and Xining, capital of northwest China's Qinghai Province.

Ticket sales for the festival period have jumped 30 percent and seats on the trains are 80 percent sold.

"I haven't seen my parents for five or six years," said Xiang Yong who is from Deyang City in southwest China's Sichuan Province. He moved to Lhasa more than 10 years ago and married a local woman named Lhaba Zhoima in 1994.

Before the railway opened last July, Xiang would have to spent 700 to 800 yuan for a bus ticket and take a grueling journey of four or five days to get home.

"Now it takes only two days to travel from Tibet to Sichuan by train," he smiled, adding that the price of a train ticket is about half the cost of bus fare.

Xiang Dong's son, named Cewang in Tibetan and Xiang Dong in mandarin, is two and a half years' old, and this will be his first visit to his grandparents' home who will "be delighted to see him," said Xiang.

As so many people are opting for train travel to and from Lhasa, the regional bus business is starting to suffer.

According to the person in charge of the west suburb long-distance bus station who declined to be named, the number of passengers during the Spring Festival transport peak had dipped 70 percent this year. The number of long-distance buses from Tibet to Xining and Chengdu have been cut from 10 to just one or two.

Editor: Donald