{"id":36336,"date":"2019-06-28T09:43:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T09:43:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-06-05T12:33:33","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T11:33:33","slug":"11336-the-china-nepal-railway-high-cost-and-hidden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/business\/11336-the-china-nepal-railway-high-cost-and-hidden\/","title":{"rendered":"The China-Nepal railway: High cost and hidden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tashi Sherpa runs the only teashop in Rasuwa Ghadhi on the border of Nepal and China, 170 kilometres northwest of the capital Kathmandu. About 50 metres away, a group of Chinese workers are busy building a bridge that will link the two countries, but none of them have ever come to her teashop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA truck brings food every few hours from that large building on the other side [of the border]. The Chinese do two things: eat and work. They eat a lot of meat,\u201d Sherpa says with a big smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each day hundreds of trucks and jeeps trundle down the bumpy road and over a temporary bridge to carry goods and tourists from China. The drivers sip tea and eat snacks in Tashi\u2019s teashop while they wait to enter Tibet or take passengers to Kathmandu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chinese workers constructing a bridge at Rasuwa Gadhi on the Nepal-China border, along the proposed railway between the two countries. (Images: Nabin Baral)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The border at Rasuwa Ghadhi only opened in 2015 after China closed the Kodari route, which was badly damaged by an earthquake. It is also where a new China-built railway from Kerung, Tibet, will run to Kathmandu in Nepal. The project is part of China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China has built a well-equipped customs and immigration office that looks like a shopping mall, but the infrastructure is still poor on the Nepalese side. When last visiting the area in 2016, police officers were checking visitors in a hut with a zinc roof. Two years later, conditions have not improved. \u201cWe don\u2019t even have a metal detector, so we have to ask each person to open their luggage and backpacks, and then check manually. A railway is beyond our imagination,\u201d says Dilip Chhetri, the police inspector on duty at the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earthquake destroyed Nepal\u2019s local revenue office. The construction of a multi-storey replacement has been delayed by a dispute with the contracting company. \u201cHow can a country which hasn\u2019t managed to construct a building for its officers in two years construct tunnels through these mountains and run trains? It\u2019s no more than a fantasy,\u201d says Finjo Lopchan, owner of Potala guesthouse in Ghattekhola, one kilometre south of the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A view of Rasuwa Gadhi from the Nepal side of the border. (Images: Nabin Baral)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nepalis want roads not railways<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposed 170-kilometre BRI railway will link the city of Kerung in southern Tibet to Nepal\u2019s capital Kathmandu, entering the country in Rasuwa district and eventually linking with India. But locals have dubbed the project kagat ko rail<\/em> (paper railway) and sapana ko rail<\/em> (dream railway).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Kerung-Kathmandu railway is part of more ambitious plans to link China and India by rail (Map source: The Conversation)<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who have suffered for years along bumpy roads in the northern border region of the country laugh at the idea of the railway. \u201cI don\u2019t feel excited when you talk about railways, I feel disappointed. Every day we have to drive along this scary road in our trucks and we hear news time and again about railways. I don\u2019t understand,\u201d says Balaram Rimal, a truck driver.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China prepared a railway pre-feasibility study for Nepal in late 2018 that showed how difficult the project would be. \u201cTechnically this will be one of the world\u2019s toughest railways to construct,\u201d says Paribesh Parajuli, the one railway engineer at Nepal\u2019s railway department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chinese study has not been made public. Parajuli says it lists \u201csix extremes\u201d, including topography, weather, hydrology and tectonics that will make construction a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About 98% of the railway on the Nepal side will be in tunnels and on bridges according to the report, with about five stopovers. Tracks will be built on steep terrain as the railway climbs from an altitude of 1,400 metres in Kathmandu to about 4,000 metres in Tibet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The proposed route also cuts through the mountains near a major fault line \u2013 where the Indian plate meets the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas \u2013 so the area is very susceptible to earthquakes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mitigating these risks means the project will cost far more than normal railways, Parajuli explains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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