There is good news for tourists who want to visit Kashmir in summer holidays, and for the pilgrims who are planning to go on the Baba Amarnath Yatra. Now, in between the Jammu-Kashmir highway, 4 new tunnels will be constructed till the month of July, and with this, the distance of the 260-KM long Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, will get reduced by around 7 KM. And with the becoming easier to travel on, it will take only 7 hours now to travel on the same.
Till now, because of landslides and traffic jams on this road, the time to travel one-way on this road is 9 hours or more. Officials have stated that the work which is going on, on this route, on all the pointers of landslides, will get completed by the end of this year. The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) had started the development of 14 tunnels on the 79 KM of hilly terrain, in between Udhampur and Banihal, to make travelling here easy, under the Highway Redevelopment Project. This includes 11 tunnels of the Ramban-Banihal stretch, and 3 in between Udhampur and Ramban.