The Olympic torch snaked through India's capital today, along boulevards purged of spectators, as 15,000 police kept protests from the world's largest community of exiled Tibetans far from the route.
Police arrest a Tibetan exile during a protest outside the hotel where the Olympic torch is being kept in New Delhi
About 70 sportsmen and celebrities including Bollywood film stars jogged along former British colonial streets on a roughly 1.9-mile (3-km) route, shortened due to fears of Tibetan protests after disruptions in other cities, including Paris.
Across India, thousands of mainly Tibetans protested. About100 protesters were detained in the capital today.
But the relay took place in a rare bubble of emptiness in a city normally teeming with street sellers, noisy autorickshaws and honking traffic.
There were almost no crowds apart from some flag-waving Chinese and a few dozen school children bussed in by officials.
Surrounded by Chinese attendants, Indian security guards in tracksuits, and police and troops with automatic rifles, runners could only wave to the television cameras.
Outside the massive security cordon, dozens of Tibetans were detained for trying to protest.
The torch, which is en route to China for the Games in Beijing, arrived in a plane before dawn and was met by protests across India, where thousands of Tibetans marched with golden Buddhist prayer lamps.
A few hours before the relay, thousands of Tibetans marched through the capital in a parallel relay to demand Tibet's independence and protest against Chinese policies in their homeland, in particular its crackdown last month on unrest.
"China's torch is a flame of shame," read one of their banners.
"There cannot be any Games without Tibet. Bring Tibet to the Games," said Tenzing Khentssin, dressed in a white "Torch Tibet" T-shirt as he marched amid chanting protesters, surrounded by hundreds of police.
Police also detained about two dozen Tibetan protesters when the torch arrived from Pakistan in the pre-dawn hours of today. Many were dragged into police vans as they shouted anti-China slogans.
In the mainly Buddhist region of Ladakh in India's Himalayas, thousands of people, including monks clad in traditional red robes, marched to show solidarity with Tibetan protesters.
In the northern town of Dharamsala, home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, some 1,500 Tibetans shouting "Free Tibet" marched and shops closed in solidarity.
In the financial hub of Mumbai, Tibetan protesters shouted slogans and waved Tibetan flags near Chinese consulate offices. Police had detained at least a dozen by this morning.