Araniko Highway

Nepal’s old road to Tibet leaves the Kathmandu valley at Dhulikhel, picks up the Sun Koshi at Dolalghat and works up the Bhote Koshi gorge on a shelf cut into the cliff to the Friendship Bridge at Kodari.

Dhulikhel is the last town on the valley rim, with its line of Himalayan peaks, and the road drops from there into the Panchkhal valley to Dolalghat, where the Indrawati meets the Sun Koshi and the rafting trips put in. It follows the river up past Lamosangu and the scar of the 2014 Jure landslide to Barabise, where the Bhote Koshi comes in. Beyond Barabise it narrows to a shelf above the gorge, badly damaged in the 2015 earthquake and cut by landslides most monsoons since, and runs on through the hot springs at Tatopani to the customs yard at Kodari, where it ends at the Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge with China’s G318 on the far bank. It was built with Chinese help between 1963 and 1967 on an old yak track, and until the 2010s it was the only official crossing between the two countries.