World’s Longest High-Altitude Road Tunnel - Rohtang Tunnel

Atal Rohtang Tunnel -
The world's longest motorable roadway at an altitude of over 3,000 metres, is ready for opening in September 2020.

India now has the longest high-altitude road tunnel in the world. The longest high-altitude tunnel is now built after a long struggle of almost around ten years.


The Atal Rohtang Tunnel, an important from strategic and security point of view, built under the Rohtang Pass is the longest high-altitude road tunnel in the world.

The tunnel is along one of only two routes into Ladakh and will become key to resupplying the military garrison there. Well, the other route into Ladakh is through the Zojila Pass which connects the Kashmir Valley with Drass.

This Atal Rohtang Tunnel, built at an altitude of 10,171 feet, has been built by connecting it to Rohtang Pass. It is the world’s highest and longest road tunnel. It is about 8.8 km long. It is also 10 meters wide.

This tunnel will reduce the distance between Manali and Leh by 46 kms. Now a journey from Manali valley to Laual and Spiti valley, which normally took more than five hours would now be completed in little over 10 minutes.

In fact, it is supposed to ensure that there is uninterrupted traffic between Manali and Leh all through the year. Himachal's tribal district Lahaul-Spiti, too, will be connected with other parts of the state even during winters.



The tunnel will also provide a high degree of all weather connectivity to Leh and forward areas of Ladakh, which remain cut off for nearly six months from the rest of the country due to snow on the passes enroute. This is extremely significant from the military logistics point of view.

Within this tunnel, any vehicle will be able to run at a maximum speed of 80 kms per hour. The construction of this tunnel was started on 28 June 2010. It has been built by the Border Road Organization (BRO). This tunnel is built in the shape of a horse shoe.

This tunnel has very advance technology support system which provides a telephone every 150 metres, fire hydrant every 60 metres, emergency exit every 500 metres, turning cavern every 2.2 km, air quality monitoring system every one km, broadcasting system and automatic incident detection system with CCTV cameras every 250 metres.