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If you've ever taken the bus or a shared cab from Jammu up to Srinagar — for a college admission, a cousin's wedding, a summer break in the valley — you know the stretch that ruins the day. Somewhere around Ramban and Banihal, the four-lane comfort runs out, the road narrows onto a landslide-prone shelf above the Chenab, and a journey that should take a few hours stretches into nine, sometimes more after a single shower.
That stretch is finally being engineered out of existence — and the first big piece is about to open.
What's opening, and when
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is pushing to make the south-bound tube of the Digdol–Panthiyal tunnel operational by the time the Amarnath Yatra gets under way in early July. That single tube runs about 3.08 km and is part of a larger 5.7-km, four-lane tunnel project on this corridor — a roughly ₹866-crore job that officials say is more than 85 per cent physically complete.
Alongside it, parts of the Sherbibi–Ramsoo viaduct — segments of about 800 m and 1,100 m of a 6.02-km elevated stretch — are being readied, with full completion expected by the end of 2026 (and possibly slipping into 2027). A third major link, the Marog–Digdol tunnel at 4.38 km, is still early in construction and is not expected before 2027–28.
The road that has resisted every deadline
To understand why a single tunnel tube is news, you have to understand the stretch it replaces. The Ramban–Banihal section sits in some of the most unstable terrain in the country — loose, fractured slopes above the Chenab that send down ‘shooting stones’ and full slides at the first heavy rain. It is the reason the four-laning of NH-44, a project years in the making, has slipped deadline after deadline: every monsoon undoes weeks of work. Tunnelling straight through the mountain, rather than clinging to its face, is the only durable fix — and it is finally reaching the stage where the public can use it.
Why it matters for the way you actually travel
This isn't just engineering trivia. The whole point of the four-laning of NH-44 is to bypass the most dangerous, slowest sections of the Jammu–Srinagar highway. When the project is done, officials estimate the highway will be nearly 50 km shorter and the drive between the two cities will fall from around nine hours to roughly four.
For young residents of Jammu, that changes the maths of a lot of decisions:
Studying in the valley. A weekend trip home from a Srinagar or Anantnag campus stops being a full-day ordeal.
Weekend escapes. Pahalgam, Gulmarg and Sonamarg move from ‘plan it for weeks’ to ‘leave Friday evening.’
Monsoon safety. Tunnels and viaducts route traffic away from the shooting-stone and landslide zones that turn the Ramban stretch deadly every rainy season — the single biggest reason these trips get cancelled or turn dangerous.
The yatra connection
The timing is deliberate. The Amarnath Yatra 2026 begins on 3 July, with the first batch of pilgrims due to roll out of the Bhagwati Nagar base camp in Jammu on 2 July. For the next two months, the Jammu–Srinagar highway carries not just regular traffic but convoy after convoy of pilgrims — which is exactly why authorities want the new tunnel tube carrying vehicles before the rush peaks.
For locals, that yatra-season crush has always been the worst time to travel. Every kilometre of road that moves into a tunnel is a kilometre that doesn't get throttled by a stalled convoy or a fresh slide.
The honest caveats
It's worth keeping expectations grounded. Deadlines on this highway have a long history of slipping, and a single opened tunnel tube is not the same as a finished four-hour highway — the full transformation depends on the remaining tunnels and viaducts that won't be ready until 2027 and beyond. The Project Director on the ground, Shubham Yadav of NHAI, and his teams are racing weather and terrain that have humbled timelines before.
But the direction of travel — literally — is clear. Piece by piece, the worst road in your travel plans is being rebuilt. The next time someone in your group says “let's just go to Srinagar for the weekend,” that sentence is getting a little less absurd.
What to keep an eye on
If you're planning a trip in the next few weeks, a few practical things follow from all this. First, expect heavy regulation of the highway through July and August as yatra convoys move — civilian traffic is often held or routed around them, so build in buffer time and check for the day's traffic advisory before you set off. Second, a newly opened tunnel tube can mean changed entry points and lane patterns near Ramban; follow signage and don't assume the route you took last summer still holds. And third, treat the ‘four-hour’ figure as the destination, not today's reality — it arrives only once the remaining tunnels and viaducts are commissioned over the next couple of years. For now, the win is narrower but real: fewer kilometres on the scariest part of the drive, and a little more certainty that a summer cloudburst won't strand your bus on a ledge for hours.
Sources: Swarajya — ‘Key Tunnel, Viaduct Sections On Jammu-Srinagar Highway To Open Before Amarnath Yatra’; Greater Kashmir — ‘Key tunnels, flyover on Jammu-Srinagar highway to be completed by 2026’; Daily Excelsior (Amarnath Yatra 2026 schedule).
