Workers play the generation game

Chamdo Bamda Airport in the Tibet autonomous region does not have a good reputation among the local people: it is renowned as the world's second-highest commercial airport, reputed to be the farthest such facility from a city anywhere in the world, and the one with the worst weather on the planet.

However, the smooth, wide, well-sealed road to the airport, flanked by snow-capped mountains and yak-dotted grasslands, means the drive is not too dreary, thanks to the generations of maintenance workers who have been stationed along the way.

Lodro is one of 23 workers responsible for a 30-kilometer section of the road. Every day at about 7:30 am, he and his colleagues drive steamrollers along the road, surveying and flattening the roadbed and cleaning the surface and ditches.