For traffic between Manali and Lahaul, Atal Tunnel changed the route through the mountains. Vehicles could pass beneath Rohtang instead of climbing over the snow-bound pass. The 9.02-kilometre tunnel, inaugurated on 3 October 2020, removed a major seasonal obstacle on a road serving both local communities and the approaches to Ladakh. [1] [5]
The government estimated that the bypass cut 46 kilometres and roughly four to five hours from the Manali–Leh journey. Those were project estimates, not a promise about every trip: weather, traffic and conditions on the rest of the route still matter. [1]
A project across governments
The decision to construct the tunnel was taken in June 2000 under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. An access-road foundation ceremony followed in 2002. The tunnel’s construction history then continued under the UPA government: a defence ministry release records Sonia Gandhi laying its foundation stone and drilling commencing on 28 June 2010. [1] [2]
That 2010 announcement expected completion by February 2015. The opening came more than five years after that projected date. The eventual delivery under Narendra Modi was a substantial infrastructure achievement, but its chronology belongs to several administrations and the institutions that carried the work between them. [2] [5]
Inside the mountain
The Border Roads Organisation was the client; a STRABAG–Afcons joint venture undertook construction. STRABAG’s project record describes fractured rock, high water pressure and difficult mountain weather. This was excavation through unstable ground, not simply a matter of advancing a machine along a planned line. [3]
The government’s completion briefing singled out the Seri Nalah fault zone as a major challenge. The two excavation fronts finally met in October 2017. Before traffic could use the finished passage, the project also required the systems that make a long road tunnel operable: ventilation, monitoring, firefighting and an emergency escape passage. [1]
One pass bypassed
The distinction between access to Lahaul and access all the way to Leh is essential. Even the 2010 defence ministry announcement warned that bypassing Rohtang alone would not make the full highway all-weather because other snow-bound passes remained. [2]
In March 2024, the ministry described the newly connected Nimmu–Padam–Darcha route and the further Shinkun La tunnel needed to make that alternative axis usable throughout the year. That separate work underlines the limits of what Atal Tunnel itself delivered. [4]
Its value does not depend on claiming an entire mountain corridor was solved at once. A difficult crossing had acquired a permanent alternative beneath it. For the people and vehicles using that section, a project pursued over decades had become a road.