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Prime Minister K P Oli returned from his China visit in December with the freshly re-inked Belt and Road Initiative Framework Cooperation Agreement . Ten infrastructure projects proposed by Nepal were approved by China as part of the BRI deal which will fund projects through ‘aid-assistance’, a wordage used to get around political sensitivity about more loans from China. One of them is the ambitious Kerung-Kathmandu Railway , which is looking uncertain because of financing, geotechnical and geopolitical challenges.
Nepal sought better connectivity with China after the 2015 earthquake-blockade crisis as a way to counterbalance India’s dominance. China was looking to expand its sphere of influence in South Asia, and got Nepal to already sign the BRI framework in 2017 which included extending its Trans-Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity Network to Kathmandu. Not to be outdone, India signed a MoU in 2018 with Nepal to survey the proposed Raxaul-Kathmandu railway , followed by another agreement in 2021 to prepare a Detailed Project Report.
Konkan Railway Corporation handed over its Final Location Survey (FLS) to the Nepal government in 2023. “We have added our comments and feedback to the draft after review and sent it to India, but haven’t got back the final report,” says Kamal Kumar Shah of Nepal’s Department of Railways. The 141km long broad gauge railway will reportedly include 42km of tunnels, 124 bridges, and 13 stations, and will cost more than $3 billion.
More expensive and difficult will be the trans-Himalayan railway that is an extension of China’s Lhasa-Xigatse line. A Chinese pre-feasibility proposed tunnels between Kerung to Kathmandu below Langtang National Park . The tunnel will have to spiral to offset the gradient drop from 4,000m on the Tibetan Plateau to 1,400m in Kathmandu.
More than 98% of the 73km standard gauge railway will burrow under the Himalaya, costing $5.5 billion. A feasibility study of the Kerung-Kathmandu railway by Chinese consultants is underway, and is expected to be completed by June 2026.
The team is drilling into the mountains for the geotechnical investigation. The northern rail alignment is expected to face the same delays as the southern line because of land compensation and environmental concerns. For China, the trans-Himalayan railway has strategic connectivity value that goes beyond Nepal to facilitate a future non-maritime trade route with India.
China is India’s biggest trade partner and its ocean route could be affected by tension in South China Sea. Ultimately, the Kerung-Kathmandu railway will have a terminal at Tokha, while the Raxaul-Kathmandu line will approach from the south at Chobhar. “As far as technical challenges are concerned, there are no limitations as such to connect China and India via railway, should both countries be open to it,” says infrastructure expert Surya Raj Acharya.
"But there have been strong reservations from India, apparently due to geopolitical concerns, as already manifested in its opposition to the BRI.” Despite a trans-Himalayan rail line also being in India’s interest, the present geopolitical climate is not conducive to cooperation to improve connectivity. New Delhi refuses to buy electricity from hydropower project in Nepal with Chinese involvement, and also embargos imports of Nepali goods with Chinese components.
New Delhi is also not too happy with Prime Minister Oli after he signed the BRI deal in Beijing last month. Some analysts say Nepal should stick to building better highway connectivity rather than invest in expensive railway lines, especially with its two neighbours. “The biggest concern with both projects is that there is zero technical input from our side, which means they have been designed according to Indian and Chinese parameters,” says Paribesh Parajuly, one of Nepal’s few railway engineers who was a consultant at the Department of Railways for the Kerung-Kathmandu project.
He says China and India have their own geopolitical interests , but Nepal should be more assertive in what it wants and needs, and stipulate the technical standards it wants followed. One of the hurdles for a China-India train connection through Nepal will be that the northern line is standard gauge, while the southern one is broad gauge. “It seems that India's proposal for the Raxaul-Kathmandu railway as a broad gauge line is a risk-mitigation exercise to prevent China from getting directly to the Indian border from Kerung through a standard gauge railway,” says Acharya.
Nepal will now have to play the waiting game until India decides on the next step of the project and whether China deems the mega trans-Himalayan project worth undertaking. But waiting should not mean that Nepal sits on its hands, there is much strategic planning to be done both for the trans-national railways as well as a future domestic network running on Nepal’s surplus electricity, and training railway technicians..
