It has been six decades since the Dalai Lama fled into exile, but in the isolated mountain hamlet where he was born, he remains very much on the minds of devotees and Chinese authorities alike.

Lying on the northeastern edge of the Tibetan plateau in Qinghai province, Taktser is where the Dalai Lama was born in 1935 to parents who farmed buckwheat and barley and is now a magnet to worshippers and foreign tourists — and security personnel.

During a recent Reuters visit to Taktser, known in Chinese as Hongya, police armed with automatic weapons blocked the winding road leading into the village of some 60 houses.