How Zoji La's winter shutdown shrank from 6 months to 32 days

Why this pass matters to anyone driving to Ladakh

Zoji La sits at 11,650 feet on the Srinagar to Leh highway, the only road link that lets a 4x4 convoy drive into Ladakh from Kashmir instead of coming in over Himachal's passes or flying into Leh. For decades, this was the chokepoint. Heavy snow and avalanche risk shut the road for 160 to 180 days every winter, cutting Drass, Kargil and onward Ladakh off from Srinagar for roughly half the year, according to the Border Roads Organisation, as reported by Devdiscourse in March 2023.

That is no longer true. In 2022 the pass reopened after 73 days of closure. In 2023, BRO cut that to 68 days. By 2025, the closure ran from 27 February to 1 April, just 32 days, with Lt Gen Raghu Srinivasan, Director General of the Border Roads Organisation, flagging off the first convoy, as ThePrint reported on 1 April 2025. This past winter, the pass stayed open beyond 28 February for the first time in its recorded history, the Tribune reported in March 2026.

How BRO actually did it

The pass is worked from both ends. Project Beacon runs the Srinagar side and Project Vijayak runs the Kargil side, and both report to BRO. Snow clearance detachments were reorganised and given more machines, so blading and dozing work can start earlier in the season and run from both directions at once instead of one crew pushing through alone. In 2025, BRO cleared the final stretch in 15 days after a Western Disturbance dumped relentless snow over 17 days, ThePrint reported.

Two tunnels explain the rest of the improvement, and they matter for a different reason than snow clearance speed. The Sonamarg or Z-Morh tunnel, a 6.5 km bore costing about ₹2,700 crore, opened on 13 January 2025 and gives Sonamarg itself all-weather access by bypassing an avalanche-prone zigzag stretch that used to take hours, according to Wikipedia's engineering summary of the project. A second, longer tunnel under Zoji La itself, 13.153 km with 17.030 km of approach road and a total cost of ₹6,809 crore, is still being built. It was meant to finish by September 2026. The Tribune reported in 2026 that cost escalation and delays, including Covid, a terror attack near the Sonamarg worksite and harsh weather, have pushed the target to February 2028, with 64 per cent physical progress so far.

What this means if you are planning a drive

For now, Zoji La is a shorter closure, not a closed loop. BRO's own record only runs to early April before reopening, and the pass still shuts with little notice if a Western Disturbance brings heavy snow, as it did for 17 straight days in February and March 2025. Anyone driving a 4x4 to Ladakh through Kashmir between November and April should still check BRO's own advisories and Ladakh Police press updates before setting out, not just last year's reopening date. Once the tunnel under Zoji La itself opens, likely in 2028 on current projections, the crossing time drops from over three hours to about 15 minutes and the pass stops being a seasonal gate altogether. Until then, the shrinking closure window is the story: a six month shutdown that is down to about a month, and some winters now to nothing at all.

Sources

• BRO opens strategic Zoji La Pass just 68 days after closure
• Zojila Pass opened in record time after 32-day closure: Defence Ministry
• Zoji La pass defies winter closure, BRO keeps Srinagar-Leh highway to Ladakh open
• Zojila tunnel project faces delay, cost escalation, completion pushed to 2028
• Zojila: From Seasonal Closure to Strategic Continuity
• Sonamarg Tunnel, Wikipedia