Cars will go where planes only fly. People will be able to drive all the way from the bustling eastern Indian city of Kolkata to Bangkok. Tourists and businessmen may still prefer the quick two-and-a-half-hour direct flight between the two cities. But intrepid travellers In quest of adventure may opt for the 2,800 km road trip through Himalayan foothills and a wide swathe of Myanmar. (The highway is expected to connect the places encircled on the map.)
The long drive will be possible on a highway under construction. Connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand, it is expected to be completed in 2027.
India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway
The 1,360 km India – Myanmar – Thailand Trilateral Highway will connect the border town of Moreh in Manipur, India, with Mae Sot on the Thailand border.
“India is supposed to construct about 200 km of the highway and upgrade 69 bridges constructed during World War II, while Thailand is responsible for roughly 30 km of construction work plus a bridge. The rest of the route will traverse parts of Myanmar,” reported The Print, an Indian website, in April this year.
Work started on the highway in 2012.
“The Indian government had in 2023 announced that about 70 per cent of the highway is complete. The remaining 30 per cent of the total construction remains in various stages of completion as a result of the security situation in Myanmar, which has seen severe clashes between the ruling junta and the rebels since 2021,” The Print added.
However, the Trilateral Highway is also being called the Kolkata-Bangkok highway, as that is what it will be, terminating not at the borders of India and Thailand but extending to the two cities, covering a distance of 2,800 km.
Places along the highway
”The highway will start from Bangkok and go through cities like Sukhothai, Mae Sot in Thailand, Yangon, Mandalay, and Tamu in Myanmar before reaching India. In India, it is likely to go through Moreh, Kohima, Guwahati, Siliguri, Srirampur to Kolkata. The total distance would be a little over 2,800 km. The longest stretch of this highway would be in India with the smallest stretch in India,” reported The Times of India in June 2023.
While adventurers may be tempted to drive along the highway through remote northeastern India and off-the-beaten-track Myanmar, the road has commercial and geopolitical objectives.
The highway is being built to boost trade, connectivity and transportation in the region.
A land route for lack of adequate sea lanes
India is pushing for land connectivity in the region as it does not have enough naval protection for shipping routes, says an Indian think tank coordinator.
“Shipping and trade has always been influenced by geopolitics. When Imperial Britain imported Persian oil, shipping lines required naval protection. Similarly, if you look at the situation in the South China Sea today, China has 340 vessels and India maybe a third of that. That’s why India is pushing for land connectivity projects like the Trilateral Highway,” Subhomoy Bhattacharjee, coordinator of the Centre for Maritime Economy and Connectivity, told The Print.
Goods-laden trucks are what the highway is being built for to promote trade and commerce.
Bilateral trade between India and Thailand stood at $16.04 billion in 2023, with exports from India to Thailand at $5.92 billion and imports from Thailand to India at $10.11 billion, says the Indian Embassy in Bangkok quoting the Thai commerce ministry.
Thailand is India’s fourth largest trading partner in Southeast Asia after Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.