64.5 kilometres. That is the tentative combined length of seven ropeways that the National Highways Logistics Management Limited (NHLML) now wants studied in detail across Jammu and Kashmir. Two of the seven are on this side of the Pir Panjal: a 2.97-km line from the Nasri tunnel portal up to Sanasar, and an 8.8-km line from Bhaderwah to the Seojdhar meadows. Nothing is being built yet. What has been floated is a Request for Proposal for consultants to prepare Detailed Project Reports, with bids closing on 11 September 2026.
- What: DPR consultancy for seven ropeway corridors in J&K under the Parvatmala programme
- Who: NHLML, the NHAI subsidiary that runs India's ropeway programme
- RFP issued: 21 August 2026 · Bids close: 11 September · Bids opened: 12 September
- Jammu-region corridors: Nasri Tunnel–Sanasar (2.97 km), Bhaderwah–Seojdhar (8.8 km)
What exactly has been tendered?
A study, not a ropeway. The RFP invites consultancy firms to carry out a Detailed Project Report for each corridor: the survey, the alignment, the engineering, the cost, the traffic and revenue estimates, and — spelled out in the scope — a social and environmental impact assessment that looks at forest and wildlife issues and what environmental and forest clearances each line would need. The corridor lengths are explicitly tentative and will be finalised only after the consultant has walked the ground.
The seven corridors on the list are Sonamarg–Thajiwas Glacier (2.13 km), Baltal–Amarnath Cave (11.6 km), Nasri Tunnel–Sanasar (2.97 km), Bhaderwah–Seojdhar (8.8 km), Doodpathri, Parihas to Diskhal (2 km), Pahalgam's Amarnath base point to Chandanwadi (14 km), and Chandanwadi to the Amarnath Cave (23 km). Five are in the Kashmir division; two are ours.
Why a ropeway from a tunnel portal?
Because of what the tunnel did to the hills above it. The 9.28-km Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Tunnel — everyone still calls it Chenani–Nashri — opened on 2 April 2017 with its southern mouth at Chenani in Udhampur district and its northern mouth at Nashri in Ramban. It takes NH-44 traffic under Patnitop, Kud and Batote, cutting about 30 km and roughly two hours off the Jammu–Srinagar run. It also means the highway no longer climbs to Patnitop at all; Sanasar, 19 km beyond Patnitop at about 2,050 m, is now a deliberate detour off the main road.
A cable car rising from the Nasri end of the tunnel straight to the Sanasar meadow would reconnect the two: leave the highway, ride up, land beside the lake. There is already a working precedent a few kilometres away. Skyview by Empyrean's 2.8-km gondola runs from Sanget, near Chenani, up to Patnitop at ₹1,099 plus taxes for a return ride — a private ropeway that has operated in exactly this belt since before the pandemic. (It was shut for maintenance until 5 September; check before you go.)
The Bhaderwah–Seojdhar line is a longer, more ambitious idea: Bhaderwah sits at about 1,613 m in Doda district, roughly 200 km by road from Jammu, and Seojdhar is the high meadow above the town that trekkers currently reach on foot or by a rough jeep track. At 8.8 km it would be one of the longer passenger ropeways in the country if it were ever built.
Hasn't this been announced before?
Yes, and it is worth being clear about that. NHLML published a tender with the same title — Carrying out Detailed Project Report study for development of ropeway projects in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, reference NHLML/Ropeways/JANDK/DPR/2025 — on 20 September 2025, with bids due on 21 October 2025. In November 2025 the Chief Secretary's review of NHLML projects listed seven priority corridors, including Nasri–Sanasar and Bhaderwah–Seojdhar, with bid submission scheduled that month. The August 2026 RFP restarts the exercise almost a year on, with one change to the list: the Shankaracharya ropeway in Srinagar, which was on the 2025 list, is gone — NHLML's own project page now shows it separately at the "bids received" stage — and the Pahalgam–Amarnath idea has been split into two corridors. NHLML has not said publicly what became of the 2025 round. If you read a headline last year saying the Sanasar ropeway was "coming", this is the same study being tendered again.
What does a DPR actually decide?
Whether the thing is worth doing at all. Under Parvatmala — the National Ropeways Development Programme announced in the 2022 Union Budget, run by NHLML in public-private partnership mode, with a stated target of over 250 ropeway projects covering 1,200 km in five years and a rule that at least half the components be made in India — the DPR is the document that tests a corridor on technical, economic, financial, environmental and social grounds. Only a corridor that passes moves to the next stage, where a private operator is picked to design, build, finance, operate and eventually hand back the ropeway (the DBFOT model the programme uses elsewhere). A DPR can also conclude that a line should not be built, or should run somewhere else; that is the point of paying for one.
So when could you ride it?
Not this paragliding season, and not next. The RFP puts no date on an opening, commits NHLML to building none of the seven, and the DPR itself will take months once a consultant is appointed after 12 September. What a young Jammu reader can reasonably take from this week's news is narrower and still useful: the two Jammu-side corridors are back on an official list with money behind the study, the environmental homework is written into the brief rather than left for later, and the answer to "is a Sanasar cable car viable?" will finally exist on paper. Until then, Sanasar is still a bus or taxi ride via Kud and Patnitop, and the September–October flying window is open now.
Sources: Daily Excelsior, 7 September 2026 — DPR exercise begins for 7 ropeway projects across J&K; the NHAI/NHLML consultancy tender "Carrying out Detailed Project Report (DPR) study for development of ropeway projects in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir" (2026 listing closing 11 September 2026; 2025 listing NHLML/Ropeways/JANDK/DPR/2025, closing 21 October 2025); Greater Kashmir, 5 November 2025 — Bids invited for DPRs of 7 ropeway projects; NHLML — Ropeways project list; PIB backgrounder, Parvatmala: National Ropeways Development Programme (10 March 2025); Chenani–Nashri Tunnel.
