Tibet to have more roads to reach monasteries

China's Tibet region has announced plans to add more roads to remote monasteries and villages in a bid to make them easily accessible.

The region will spend 200 billion yuan (about $32 billion) on building new roads and repairing old ones in the next six years, Xinhua quoted Tashi Gyatso, a senior official with Tibet's transport department, as saying Friday.

The campaign, the official said, is partly driven by the need to make monasteries more accessible. Tibet had paved roads leading to 813 registered monasteries and other religious venues by the end of 2013.

Tibet has over 1,700 registered monasteries and venues for religious activities, with about 46,000 monks and nuns. The region is expected to soon have blacktop roads leading into over 80 percent of townships, and to complete construction of the road linking Lhasa and Nyingchi, a prefecture in southeast Tibet that borders India.

"It could reduce the driving time from Lhasa to Nyingchi by more than two hours," the official added.

The region now has 70,591 km of road and will extend it to about 110,000 km by the year 2020.