Tunnel will raise stakes in 'the gorge of corpses'

India and China went to war over the territory in 1962. Now New Delhi plans to drill a high-altitude 8.8km tunnel under the strategic Rohtang pass.

At 3,978m, the Rohtang pass - the Himalayan gateway to the Tibetan plateau - is one of the world's highest and most deadly roads.

DELHI // In Tibetan its name means "gorge of corpses". The Rohtang pass in north India, which acts as a gateway through the Himalayas to the Tibetan plateau, has been claiming the lives of travellers for centuries.

Every year, hundreds of people are stranded or die on the 3,978m high pass. The road that runs through it, one of the world's highest, is open only for six months during the summer and regularly suffers sudden temperature drops, freak snowstorms and high winds. Last November, nine army engineers died trying to cross the Rohtang on foot, while earlier this month, heavy snow meant vehicles could not get through the pass for a week.

But all that will soon change. This month, work will begin on an all-weather tunnel that will allow year-round access to the strategically important region of Ladakh, which borders China. When it is completed the tunnel will be 8.8km long and reach 3,380 metres above sea level at its highest point, making it the longest high-altitude tunnel in the world. The ambitious project is the centre piece of a new Indian drive to develop infrastructure in areas along the Chinese border in order to match dramatic improvements made on the other side over the past few decades.

China and Indian share a 3,225km border, much of which is disputed. Along the east of that border, China lays claim to 92,000 square kilometres of "Southern Tibet", which India currently administers as the state of Arunachal Pradesh. Meanwhile, in the west, India says China is illegally occupying Aksai Chin, a 37,000 square kilometre area of the Tibetan plateau, which Delhi says is historically part of Ladakh.

In 1962, the two sides fought a brief but bloody war over these two territories during which Chinese forces overran Indian outposts before unilaterally retreating. Many in the Indian military say the two countries could go to war again. Last year tensions flared once more after a spate of media reports that incursions by Chinese soldiers into Indian territory were on the rise. "Until all territorial and border disputes are resolved, tensions will continue and a second war cannot be ruled out," said Brig Gurmeet Kanwal, the director of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, a Delhi-based think tank.

"The Indian army needs to develop the infrastructure required to get troops to the border on time in case push actually comes to shove," he said. For decades India followed a policy of leaving its border areas undeveloped to prevent China from penetrating deeper inside the country in the event of an invasion. Lack of funds combined with a democratic system also meant successive Indian governments preferred to spend their limited budgets on projects in densely populated areas where they would do the most good - and win the most votes - rather than on difficult and expensive ventures in the thinly populated border regions.

As a result, today there is almost no infrastructure in Ladakh and Arunachal, while in Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal - three other northern Indian states - the road peters out toward the Chinese border. Ladakh is only accessible by two potholed-roads for six months a year and in winter, bad weather often means that planes cannot land for days - cutting the region off completely. Arunachal does not even have an airport, meaning people are forced to rely on expensive helicopter services to get around or endure treacherous road trips that often take several days just to cover a few hundred kilometers.

Neither Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal, nor Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir - the state where Ladakh is located - is connected to the rest of the country by rail. But while India was ignoring its frontier regions, China was busy developing its own. In the 1950s China constructed a highway though Aksai Chin and along much of the border with India. Later, it connected this road to the Trans-Karakorum highway, which drops down into Pakistan and runs close to the Line of Control in Kashmir.

In the last decade, China has begun upgrading these older links while also investing heavily in new infrastructure such as the high-altitude rail link connecting Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, with the rest of the country. In 2006, the Chinese opened an airport at Mainling, just 10km from the border with Arunachal, and work has begun to extend the Lhasa rail link to three other towns along the frontier.

While Beijing says these projects are peaceful, they have many in the Indian military worried. "They are building airstrips and railways across Tibet that cannot be justified in the name of tourism or the economic needs of the local population," said Brig Kanwal. "We cannot ignore the advantage this gives them." He and other military experts estimate that China can now get battle-ready troops to the border within 48 hours, while it could take the Indian army as long as 12 days.

Hence the importance of the Rohtang tunnel, which will cut four hours from the 24-hour drive between Manali, the last town before the pass, and Leh, the capital of Ladakh. Work will officially start on the US$323 million (Dh1.18 billion) tunnel today when Sonia Gandhi, chairwoman of the ruling Congress party, lays the foundation stone. India's defence minister, A K Antony, and the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Omar Abdullah, will also be present at the ceremony. The tunnel is scheduled for completion in 2015. Engineers associated with the tunnel say the terrain and the altitude make it a highly difficult project.

The thin air means workers and machinery cannot work at full capacity and steep-sided mountains mean there will be a constant risk of avalanche. "The Rohtang Tunnel is the most challenging assignment the Border Roads Organisation ? has ever undertaken," the ministry of defence said in a statement last week. Over the next few years, the government is also planning to build a new road to Leh to further improve accessibility.

While analysts concede that progress is being made, they still say the pace of change is too slow. Work might be beginning on the Rohtang tunnel but many other projects are being held up by red-tape, lack of funding or a shortage of skilled manpower. "You can't stop China," said Amit Kumar of the Observer Research Foundation, a Delhi-based think tank. "You have to develop your own infrastructure. In 10 years the condition in India will be improved."

But will it be as good as in China? "It will take time," he said. [e-mail]