Atal Tunnel: Why did 'bypass surgery' have to be done in the Himalayan mountains?

A closer look at the map of Kashmir-II and Ladakh presented here reveals that there are only two ways to reach Leh by motorway. One route goes from Srinagar to Leh via Sonmarg, Dras and Kargil, the other route goes from Manali to Leh via Rohtang Ghat.

The well-known saying 'what is seen in a map is not seen in anything' is enough to increase the knowledge of geography, but the maps showing the route of Manali-Leh have to be forgotten enough. There is a reason for this. The way the lines are drawn in Google Maps or any other road atlas is not straightforward at all. Rather, it should be said that it is extremely confusing and dangerous. Due to snowfall, it is completely closed for traffic for six months of the year. There are 200 mountain slopes in a total length of 30 km, where avalanches occur at any time and the mound of avalanches blocks the road. In monsoons, landslides also cause rocks to stand in the way.

Even if these two are not natural obstacles, the road has been eroded to such an extent due to rain and snowfall that the paved, flat road appears to have collapsed. In many places, you can't even see the asphalt of the road — just dust! A two-wheeler like a road motorcycle, as experienced while riding a bike between Leh and Manali two years ago, has to run at a slower pace. Otherwise, the constant jerks may or may not loosen the hollows of the motorcycle, but the alignment of the lumbar vertebrae will not remain unchanged. Heavy vehicles such as jeeps are also seen riding on bullock carts in many places.

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Even if you forget the dilapidated condition of the road for a while, the bigger problem is the traffic jam caused by the snowfall at high altitudes. Fifty kilometers north of Manali, let's talk about a mountain ghat called Rohtang. Rohtang has an elevation of 16,058 feet above sea level. By Himalayan standards, that height is said to be quite normal. But what makes Rohtang extraordinary is the weather there. Cold winds have been blowing here since mid-November. The snowfall begins. The tonnage of snow accumulating on the mountain slopes would come down at a speed of 200 kmph every hour and create roadblocks. Heavy vehicles called earth movers in English can barely open the road for transport when it takes hours to clear the snow. Meanwhile, freight lorries, taxis, government buses and passenger vehicles have to wait. If it is good, you have to spend the whole night in the vehicle amidst the freezing cold.

For the next five months after November, nature at Rohtang Ghat assumes the form of Raud. Blizzards, avalanches and blizzards put Rohtang in a state of lockdown. Not a single vehicle can pass through that ghat road enough to take an oath, as the 40 feet high mound of snow is jammed. Engineers from the Border Road Organization begin clearing the snow after the snow begins to melt in late April. The Rohtang road will finally reopen to traffic by the end of May.

Private or government vehicles may be waiting for such a long time, but why is it that the military lorry, which supplies arms and food to our troops on duty at the Chinese border in Ladakh, is stopped? As a result, about 90% of the supplies to the Indian Army, based in Ladakh and Siachen, are sent via the Srinagar-Dras-Kargil route. The National Highway-1, known as Alpha, which is open even during the heavy snowfalls of winter, is similar to the Dhorinus of Ladakh, which, if cut, would separate the whole of Ladakh from the rest of India.

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In view of this fact, in the 19th century, a strategic proposal was put forward by the Defense Committee of India: to make a tunnel on the road connecting Ladakh with Manali in Himachal Pradesh! The site of the proposed tunnel was Dhundhi village, which is 17.056 feet high west of Rohtang Ghat. The Rohtang Ghat, which is covered with snow for six months of the year, could have been bypassed if a Navek kilometer tunnel had been dug across the Himalayan mountains from the fog at an altitude of tens of thousands of feet. Another important advantage was that the distance between Manali and Leh was reduced to 51 km after the construction of the tunnel.

Strategically, the tunnel was not only necessary but also inevitable for India. However, the proposed project was dusted off in government files. He was not remembered for a full 15 years — and then an event was held in 19 to explain his significance. Pakistan secretly sent its mujahideen troops to the mountain fronts of Drasana and Kargil with the intention of cutting off the Dhorinus of National Highway-1 Alpha connecting Srinagar with Leh. His plan was to reach Highway-1 Alpha on the Mashkoh Valley in Dras, blow up the road with explosives and then occupy it.

If Pakistan's intentions are met, the traffic of Indian Army supply vehicles will be disrupted. Indian troops stationed on the Ladakh and Siachen fronts stopped receiving weapons. If Pakistan's army takes advantage of this opportunity and launches a whirlwind attack there, our departure (due to lack of new supplies) may not be able to give a long fight. Thus, the security of Siachen and Ladakh region is at stake.

The pimps of the Indian Army, however, did not allow Pakistan's plan to succeed. On the mountain fronts like Kargil, Batalik, Dras, Tololing, the soldiers gave a tough fight to the enemy. India's 400 artillery shells were fired at 5,000 times a day and the planes found everything and launched air strikes. Fifty-five people were killed, about 1,8 were wounded and eight were missing in the three-day battle. The cost to India of the war was no less than Rs 1,100 crore.

The chapter of Kargil war was written in the military history of India as the victory story of our heroes. But think of a question, why was the Kargil War finally written in the annals of India?

A very short, yet two-point answer to this can be given by saying that because of that road called Highway-1 Alpha! Had India had a back-up road connecting Ladakh with Kashmir, Pakistan's eyes might not have been on Highway-1 Alpha. This back-up road is the Manali-Leh highway, where the Kargil war might have been averted if the government had accepted the project of constructing a tunnel bypassing the snow-capped Rohtang road in 19.

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June, 2000.

Exactly one year had passed since the Kargil war was won. The then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on a visit to the Lahore-Spinti region of Himachal Pradesh. This scenic region is across the Rohtang Ghat. The road to Rohtang Ghat will be snowy for six months of winter

There the inhabitants of Lahore-Spishti become detached from the outside world. They have to deal with many inconveniences, big and small, ranging from the necessities of life to the lack of advanced medical treatment. During his visit to Lahore-Spasati, Prime Minister Vajpayee learned about the problems in detail and then promised the people to build the Rohtang Tunnel immediately. It is pertinent to note here that the first proposal to build a ropeway bypassing Rohtang was made by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 190 to alleviate the winter calamity that the residents of Lahore-Spiti had to face.

Even after Prime Minister Vajpayee gave the green signal, ten years were spent on the construction of the proposed tunnel, its layout and how to implement it. Excessive delay. But it's too late! The project finally came to an end at Dhundhi in June 2010 — the 8th year of the project proposal! To build a network of roads and bridges in the skyscrapers of the Himalayas, our Border Roads Organization, in collaboration with an Austrian engineering company, was to build a 4.5-kilometer stretch across the Pir Panjal Mountains. It was expected that the Bhagirath work would be completed in five years at a cost of Rs. Moreover, the workers and engineers who had excavated three and a half kilometers in a short span of two years were proving that assumption to be true.

Of course, does Nagadhiraj flirt with the Himalayan black-headed man so easily? Nagadhiraj, who was sitting in the samadhi, seemed to be angry for disturbing him, saying that many challenges and obstacles were waiting for the workers-engineers. In Sunday's 'Ek Njar A Taraf', a heart-wrenching story of how the brave and brave people faced it and how they constructed the tunnel! (In order)