A years-long engineering challenge beneath one of Rajasthan’s protected forests is nearing its conclusion. A twin-tube highway tunnel running under Mukundra Hills Tiger Reserve in Kota district is on course to welcome all traffic categories in August, once ongoing safety evaluations wrap up. Light vehicle trials are already in progress.
Each tube accommodates four lanes, making it the country’s first eight-lane road tunnel to pass beneath a wildlife sanctuary. The structure was conceived entirely underground to leave the forest floor undisturbed, allowing resident tigers and other wildlife to move across the surface without encountering highway traffic.
Spanning 4.9 km on the Delhi-Mumbai Expressway’s Delhi-Vadodara corridor, the tunnel replaces a considerably longer and slower mountain road through the reserve. The time saved on this stretch alone is substantial, and once the broader expressway is fully functional, the Delhi-Vadodara journey is expected to shrink from roughly 20 hours to around half that.
Final clearances covering emergency systems and in-tunnel communications are being worked through, with full opening anticipated sometime after July 31.
