PROSPECT OF A DISTANT GOLD

THE PEOPLE in these photographs are not refugees from war or disaster. They have chosen their fate, deliberately and willingly, and the physical hardships and bitterly cold weather that they endure scarcely bother them. As they push their trucks onward, gasping for breath, there is only one thing on their minds: gold.

But these would-be prospectors are not searching in Brazil, or in South Africa, or in any other country where you might reasonably expect to find gold. They are embroiled in the world's least-known and most hazardous gold-rush: searching for gold in Tibet. Every spring, as the snows melt on the high Himalayan plains, thousands of Chinese peasants set out from the town of Golmud in the province of Qinghai, with their tractors and their carts - some even in bare feet - hoping to strike it rich.

Golmud, some 200 miles from the border with Tibet, was one of the army posts from which the Communist government in Peking began to wrest independence from Buddhist Tibet in the Fifties. And since economic liberalisation began in China a decade ago, the town has become the base camp for a gold rush that has claimed thousands of lives.

But despite all this, there is no shortage of people willing to make the trip. The haggling begins at Golmud, where prospective miners arrive with their supplies - coal and food for at least five months, as well as generators, tractors and pumps. They gather in vast tented cities to argue over guns, gold and opium. Although many of the prospectors have made unsuccessful expeditions many times before, they still imagine that their next strike will be "the big one". One man boasts of having killed another in a knife fight; another veteran regales his companions with tales of fabulous strikes from the past - legends of gold have come from Tibet since the days of Herodotus, who described "nomads riding on camels stealing gold away from ants bigger than foxes".

Although Zeng Nian's pictures are less obviously disturbing than Sebastiao Salgado's famous photographs from the Seventies, in which mud-drenched men were seen scrabbling over each other in the gold mines of Brazil, they depict a hardship that is hardly less severe.

The journey from Golmud over the border to Tibet takes about 20 days of hard travelling through barren, unpopulated terrain. Once the miners reach Tibet, they leave the road - driving through fierce sun and blinding snowstorms at altitudes of over 5,000 metres - and head for the upper valleys of the Indus, in the far western region of Tibet. Their overladen trucks frequently become stuck in the mud and have to be pushed some of the way. The miners travel in caravans of 20 or more people for security; but prospectors often fight each other - over the best digging locations, for example - and murder and theft are common.

All along the way, the miners have to be prepared to pay their way. The bribery starts at Golmud, where army drivers wanting to make a quick killing agree to take the miners in their lorries past the checkpoints on the road to Tibet - an official mining permit from the Chinese government costs 10,000 yuans (pounds 900). When the miners eventually reach the valleys, they have to contend with the local militias, many of whom demand money to sub-let their claims to the desperate prospectors.

But although there is still gold to be found in the region, more than half the miners return empty-handed. One exiled Tibetan leader has described the mining concessions being sold by the Chinese as a cynical bid to exploit their own people, as well as the resources of Tibet. The local Tibetan population, far outnumbered by the gold-diggers, is alarmed by the continuing desecration of their sacred rivers and mountains. Gold and greed march hand in hand.

These are desperate men in desperate conditions: in 1989, more than 1,000 miners died from cold and disease in the area. Most press on, weakened by the savage conditions and the lack of oxygen. Sometimes, though, they lose heart. "The mine was supposed to be just over the next mountain," said one man at Golmud last year, "but it seemed there was always another mountain, and another..." !