Kuti–Kodari corridor (Tatopani / Araniko Highway)कुती–कोदारी (तातोपानी)

The Kuti road is the corridor where Nepal's trade history is most legible as layers: a Newar caravan trail, then Nepal's first highway to Tibet, then the country's biggest customs point, then an earthquake ruin, and now a diminished second fiddle to Rasuwa. Kodari in Sindhupalchok — at 2,300–2,515 m, 144 km from Kathmandu — was in ancient times the starting point of a trans-Himalayan caravan route: traders crossed the Kuti pass (Kuti is today's Nyalam in Tibet) and continued to Lhasa. Kuti was the shorter, steeper counterpart of Kyirong, preferred by generations of Lhasa-bound merchants for its directness — accepting the brutal Bhote Koshi gorge in exchange for the shortest line from Kathmandu to the plateau. Its medieval importance is written into its modern name: Araniko, the Patan artisan who led 80 craftsmen to Tibet in 1260 and rose to head the Yuan imperial workshops, travelled this corridor. It was also the main axis of the 1788 Gorkha invasion of Tibet — Kuti fell in January 1789.

When Beijing and Kathmandu agreed to motorise the link, the symbolism was contentious — King Mahendra reportedly brushed off Indian objections with the quip that communism does not travel by taxi. The 112 km Araniko (Arniko) Highway was agreed in 1961 and built in 1963–67 with Chinese assistance on an older yak track, connecting through the Friendship Bridge over the Bhote Koshi to China National Highway 318 and on to Lhasa. For half a century Kodari–Zhangmu (Khasa) was the funnel for almost everything Nepal bought from China overland: before 2015, the Tatopani customs office collected over Rs 15 million in revenue daily.

The earthquake of 25 April 2015 ended that era in minutes. The gorge's slopes failed catastrophically on both sides of the border; Zhangmu, a bazaar town stacked on a cliff, was evacuated entirely, its residents moved 475 km to Shigatse, and the crossing stayed closed for about four years. The rebuilt Friendship Bridge reopened on 29 May 2019 under heavy restrictions — only five trucks entered in the first two months — and then closed again in the pandemic.

Since September 2023 Tatopani has functioned as an import-only secondary gate: NPR 50.40 billion of imports and zero exports in FY 2024/25, with China evidently preferring the Kerung corridor, where it controls a purpose-built port — despite Kerung lying 75 km farther from Kathmandu. China allowed 30-plus containers a day at Rasuwa while Kodari traffic stayed negligible. The deeper continuity is the asymmetry itself: as in the Malla era, the terms of trans-Himalayan exchange are set from the plateau side.