TAWANG, India - Indian officials clamped down Monday on journalists covering the Dalai Lama's trip to a disputed border area in an apparent effort to minimize tensions with neighboring China.

China has protested the Tibetan spiritual leader's weeklong visit to the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh that began Sunday after months of rising friction between India and China.

The Dalai Lama was holding prayer meetings and teaching sessions with adherents in the Himalayan town of Tawang, near the frontier with Chinese-controlled Tibet.

India refused to allow foreign journalists to travel to Tawang to cover the trip and tried to keep local reporters away from the Dalai Lama on Sunday.

As the Dalai Lama inaugurated a hospital wing in Tawang on Monday, Leki Phuntso, a media official with the state government, told waiting reporters they were "requested not to ask any questions.

China had demanded India call off the trip, but India said the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile here since 1959, was an honored guest and free to visit any part of the country.