Top 5 Longest Rail and Road Tunnels of India in 2026

How India Is Rewriting Its Underground Map

Drive or ride through the Himalayas today, and you’ll notice something that wasn’t true even a decade ago — the mountains no longer get the final say on your travel time. Snowbound passes that once cut off entire valleys for half the year are now bypassed through kilometres of tunnel, and railway lines that used to hug cliff edges now punch straight through them. Here are the five tunnels currently defining that shift.

1. Pir Panjal Railway Tunnel — 11.21 km

Cutting through the Pir Panjal range in Jammu and Kashmir, this remains India’s longest railway tunnel, linking Banihal and Qazigund. It was the piece that finally gave the Kashmir Valley a dependable, all-weather rail connection to the rest of the country, something that used to depend entirely on road passes that shut down every winter. Trains take under ten minutes to clear it, but the engineering behind that short ride — boring through unstable, water-logged Himalayan rock — took years of painstaking work.

2. Zoji La Tunnel — 14.2 km (under construction)

Once finished, Zoji La will overtake Pir Panjal in length and become the longest road tunnel in Asia. It’s being built under the notorious Zoji La pass connecting Sonamarg and Drass in Ladakh, a stretch that currently shuts for months each winter due to snow and avalanches. This isn’t just a convenience project — it’s meant to give Ladakh year-round access to the rest of India, both for civilians and for the armed forces stationed along the border.

3. Chenani-Nashri Tunnel (Patnitop Tunnel) — 9.28 km

Already operational for several years, this tunnel on NH-44 between Jammu and Srinagar remains one of the longest road tunnels in the country. It was built specifically to dodge the avalanche-prone Patnitop stretch, shaving both distance and risk off a route that used to be a seasonal gamble. A parallel escape tunnel runs alongside it for ventilation and emergency evacuation — a feature that quietly does a lot of the safety work without ever getting noticed by the average traveller.

4. Atal Tunnel (Rohtang Tunnel) — 9.02 km

Sitting under the Rohtang Pass on the Leh-Manali highway, the Atal Tunnel holds a different kind of record — it’s the world’s longest tunnel built above 3,000 metres. Before it opened, the Lahaul-Spiti valley used to disappear off the map for nearly half the year once the pass snowed in. Now it’s a short, level drive through the mountain instead of a white-knuckle climb over it, and the distance between Manali and Leh has shrunk by roughly 46 km in the bargain.

5. Karbude Railway Tunnel — 6.5 km

Before Pir Panjal came along, Karbude held the title of India’s longest rail tunnel. It sits on the Konkan Railway line between Ukshi and Bhoke stations in Maharashtra’s Ratnagiri district, and it’s still the longest tunnel on what many consider India’s most scenic rail route — a line that threads through the Western Ghats and runs close to the Arabian Sea for long stretches, from Mumbai down to Mangalore.