Tashi Sherpa runs the only teashop in Rasuwa Gadhi on the Nepal-China border, 170 km north of the capital Kathmandu. About 50 meters away, a group of Chinese workers is busy building a bridge that will link the two countries, but none of them has ever come to her teashop.
“A 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,” Sherpa said with a big smile.
Hundreds of trucks and jeeps trundle down the bumpy road every day, over a temporary bridge, to carry goods and tourists from China. While they wait to enter Tibet or take passengers to Kathmandu the drivers sip tea and eat snacks in Tashi’s teashop.
The border here only opened after the devastating Nepal earthquake in 2015 led to China closing the badly damaged Kodari route. It is also where the new railway – proposed as part of China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – will enter Nepal from Tibet.
China has built a well-equipped customs and immigration office, which looks like a shopping mall. But the infrastructure on the Nepalese side is a complete mess. In 2017, when visited the area, police officers were checking visitors in a hut with a zinc roof. Two years later, conditions have not improved. “We don’t 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,” said Dilip Chhetri, the police inspector on duty at the border.
Since tourists visiting Mount Kailash have started to flock through this land route, owners of newly built hotels are expecting more business in the future. The railway will be a further boost, they hope.
The earthquake destroyed Nepal’s local revenue office, but the construction of a multi-story replacement has been delayed due to a dispute with the contracting company. “How can a country which hasn’t managed to construct a building for its officers in two years construct tunnels through these mountains and run trains? It’s no more than a fantasy,” said Finjo Lopchan, owner of Potala guesthouse in Ghattekhola, one kilometer south of the border.
“To be honest, my head spins when people talk about railways. Look at the roads here. Shameless government,” he added.
How near is Nepal’s BRI railway?
The proposed BRI railway will link Kerung city in southern Tibet to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, entering the country in Rasuwa district and eventually going on to India. But locals have dubbed the project kagat ko rail (paper railway) and sapana ko rail (dream railway).
People who have suffered for years along bumpy roads in the northern border region of the country laugh at the idea of the railway. “I don’t 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’t understand,” said Balaram Rimal, a truck driver who carries goods across the border from Kerung regularly.
China prepared for Nepal a pre-feasibility study of the railway in late 2018. This report suggested it was an extremely hard project, but not impossible. “Technically this will be one of the world’s toughest railways to construct”, said Paribesh Parajuli, the only railway engineer at Nepal’s railway department, who will leave once his short-term consultancy contract expires.
The Chinese study has not been made public despite the intense debate over what’s happening. The report lists “six extremes”: including topography, weather, hydrology and tectonics that will make the project hugely challenging, said Parajuli, who shared the findings of the report.
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 need to be built on steep terrain, as the railway climbs from an altitude of 1,400 meters in Kathmandu to about 4,000 meters in Tibet.
The proposed route also cuts through the mountains near a major fault line – where the Indian plate meets the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas – so the area is very susceptible to earthquakes.
Mitigating these risks means the project will cost far more than normal railways, Parajuli explained.
Underprepared, overwhelmed
In Nepal, there are almost no preparations in place. Consultants are currently studying another railway, the east-west railway planned in the southern plains near to India. But the state lacks people capable of reviewing their reports, much less anybody to actually lead the construction of the railways. In the decade since it was set up, Nepal’s railway department is yet to hire a single permanent railway engineer, but it hopes to construct 4,000 kilometers of railways in the next two decades.
A new 34-kilometer railway from the Indian state of Bihar to Nepal is due to start running in a few months, but the government will have to hire a train driver from India and other technicians to operate its first modern rail, according to local media reports.
Where is the money?
Preliminary estimates put the costs of the railway from Kerung to Kathmandu at about 38 billion yuan (USD$5.5 billion), almost equal to Nepal’s total revenue in 2018. The railway would be 170 kilometers long from Tibet to Kathmandu. Although only one-third of the total length falls on the Nepal side, it would account for almost half of the costs due to the extreme geology and climate.
Despite these challenges, Nepal’s railway dreams moved closer to reality after the project was listed as one of the 64 to be considered under China’s BRI during the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in April. However, this does not guarantee any financial support for the project.
Nepal is seeking a grant from China to construct the railway, but China has remained reticent. The Nepal government did not allocate any money for the northern railways in its budget speech in May. But according to officials at Nepal’s infrastructure and transport ministry, a detailed study for the Kerung-Kathmandu railway will cost an estimated – five times the country’s total rail budget for the next year.
Despite this, finance minister Yubaraj Khatiwada has declared the date of construction: “We will complete the detailed project report and feasibility study and start construction work on the Kerung- Kathmandu railway in the next two years,”
The Chinese do not seem in such a rush. In 2014, the Qinghai-Tibet railway reached Shigatse in Tibet about 500 kilometers northeast of Nepal’s border. The railway was scheduled to arrive on the border at Kerung by 2020, but the Chinese have pushed that back to 2025, according to recent media reports.
Debt trap fears
At home, there are fears of the potential financial burden to the country if the railway is built. But the government has refuted the possibility that Chinese loans could push the country into a debt trap. “The main thing is how projects are selected, whether they are selected on the basis of possible returns. And what is the payback plan?” Pradip Gyawali, Nepal’s foreign minister, said in May.
While the minister could not answer questions about what Nepal would export to China by train, the prime minister, KP Oli, has suggested mineral water. But since mineral water is already a multi-billion dollar industry in Tibet, the market is already saturated.
-Reported by Ramesh Bhushal, The Wire. Link to the article here.
