The north face of Mount Everest is a dazzling and pristine white in the sunshine of a July morning as, below, a monk in crimson robes steps out of the highest monastery in the world. He wanders across the courtyard and joins a straggle of people gathered outside Rongbuk, an idyllic and remote Buddhist retreat lying in the shadow of the majestic mountain. But something is wrong. The monk stares across the remote landscape in bewilderment as a bulldozer belching black smoke tears up the ancient dirt track in front of him.
Rongbuk monastery, 5km above sea level in the Tibetan Himalayas, has for decades been the last point of civilisation for expeditions heading up the north face of Everest. But apart from the few groups of mountaineers who pass the retreat on their ascent, the 30 monks and nuns who live in the monastery have been rarely touched by the modern world. One morning this month, that changed forever.
At 9am on July 6, with a clatter and a smoky roar, an extraordinary and controversial project by the Chinese government - to build a 100km road halfway to the top of the world - arrived on the doorstep of Rongbuk in the shape of a dirt-caked bulldozer with a red flag flying from its roof.
By midday, the bulldozer had been joined by a small convoy of steamrollers, cranes and trucks and a ragtag mob of labourers, some in their early teens, carrying crude pickaxes and shovels. This was the advance guard of an army of peasant workers commandeered to blast a road all the way to Everest Base Camp in just three months.
For China, which sent the People's Liberation Army (PLA) into the hermit kingdom of Tibet half a century ago, this grandiose scheme will pave the way for a spectacular curtain-raiser to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Next May, runners will carry the Olympic torch along the new road to base camp then pass it into the hands of a relay team, who will attempt to take it to the highest point on Earth.
For green groups, campaigners for a free Tibet and many serious mountaineers the road is a travesty that will seriously disturb an already fragile and overburdened environment. Not only will the road bring busloads of tourists to the face of Everest, it will also act as a powerful symbol of the mainland government's desire to quash any notion of Tibetan independence in this wild western outpost more than 5,000km from Beijing.
For the monks of Rongbuk, the project has come as a bolt from the blue. The monastery sits close to a site reputed to have been visited by Guru Rinpoche, the man who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the 8th century. 'We had no idea this was going to happen until the machines began to arrive,' says Lobsang Choedeng, a 57-year-old monk who has lived at the monastery for 20 years. 'I am worried about what this road will bring to us.'