Feeder Roads of Nepal: The 'F' Series by District & Province

Nepal's Strategic Road Network (SRN) is the country's core road system, made up of national highways plus a second tier called feeder roads. It is planned, built and maintained by the Department of Roads (DoR) under the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport (MoPIT). Everything below the SRN — urban, rural and agricultural roads — falls to provincial and local governments and the Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLI).

Feeder roads are the connective layer that sits between the long national highways and the dense web of local roads. Their defining job is to link a district headquarters (or an important town, market or border point) to the nearest national highway, so that a district centre is never more than one road removed from the trunk network. That is why residents and contractors often search for a specific feeder-road name or for 'the roads connecting' a particular district headquarters — the feeder road is frequently the only strategic route serving that town.

The category is not new. Nepal's first Nepal Road Standard (1970, revised as Nepal Road Standard 2070/2013) formally defined 'feeder road' as a distinct functional class, and the DoR has carried the label through successive editions of its Statistics of Strategic Road Network (SSRN). Understanding this hierarchy — national highway, then feeder road, then local road — is the key to reading any Nepali road map or SSRN table.

Every feeder road in the SRN carries a code beginning with the letter 'F' followed by a number, written as F001, F002 and so on up to F210. This mirrors the 'H'/'NH' prefix used for national highways (for example NH01, the Mahendra/East–West Highway). The F-number is the road's permanent identifier in the register, independent of the local name people actually use for the route.

The authoritative list is the Department of Roads' SSRN register — the Statistics of Strategic Road Network — published periodically (editions include SSRN 2015/16 and SSRN 2017/18). Each entry records the feeder road's code, its route name (usually the string of towns it passes through), its length in kilometres, and the national highway it connects to. The DoR also maintains an online SSRN map through its Highway Management Information System (HMIS) unit, which lets you view each feeder road's alignment geographically.

Because the codes were assigned in waves, the numbering tells a small story of its own. The lower numbers were allotted first, while a large block of newer strategic feeder roads was proposed later in the F052–F210 range. The final entry, F210, was a provisional feeder road serving as an alternative to the Pakali–Kanchanpur section of the East–West Highway (NH01) — a reminder that the register was a working document, updated as routes were added, merged or upgraded.

At its peak the SSRN register listed roughly 209 feeder roads (with codes running up to F210). In the SSRN 2017/18 edition, the DoR recorded about 21 national highways and 209 feeder roads, and the Strategic Road Network as a whole measured on the order of 13,447 km. Feeder roads therefore made up a substantial share of the strategic network by count, even though individual feeder roads are typically far shorter than a national highway.

The mix has shifted dramatically over two decades. The SSRN 2004 baseline listed only 12 national highways and 51 feeder roads. Over the following years the number of national highways climbed while feeder roads were repeatedly added, split and — later — promoted, so the feeder-road count first swelled toward 200-plus and then began to fall as routes were upgraded.

Lengths vary enormously across the series. Some feeder roads are short urban links or bypasses of only a few kilometres, while others are long mountain corridors: examples in the register run from single-digit-kilometre spurs up to routes well over 200 km. Because the DoR's recorded chainage and field measurements can differ slightly, treat any single length figure as indicative and confirm it against the current SSRN or the DoR map before using it for planning.

The most useful way to navigate the F series is geographically, because every feeder road is anchored to a district — usually the one whose headquarters it serves. Nepal's 77 districts are grouped into seven provinces: Koshi (formerly Province No. 1), Madhesh, Bagmati, Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpashchim. Sorting the feeder roads under these provinces turns a flat list of 200-plus codes into a browsable directory.

In the eastern and central Tarai and hills — Koshi, Madhesh and Bagmati — feeder roads tend to be shorter connectors off the East–West Highway, linking market towns, border points and district centres to NH01. In Gandaki, Lumbini, Karnali and Sudurpashchim, feeder roads more often become long, climbing corridors that carry a remote district headquarters up from a Tarai or mid-hill highway. Karnali in particular depends on feeder roads such as the Hilsa–Simikot route to reach headquarters that have no other strategic connection.

When you look up 'roads in [district] Nepal', the strategic answer is almost always a feeder road plus whichever national highway it meets. Below are representative examples spread across the provinces so you can see the pattern of code, route, length and connecting highway.

Each register line packs four pieces of information. The code (for example F042) is the permanent identifier. The route name lists the settlements strung along the road, which is how you match a feeder road to a place you know — 'Pokhara–Kushma–Beni–Jomsom' immediately tells you it runs from Pokhara up the Kali Gandaki toward Mustang. The length gives an approximate chainage in kilometres, and the connecting-highway field names the national highway (or highways) the feeder road ties into.

That last field is what makes the network legible. A feeder road is only 'strategic' because it feeds a highway: F035 matters because it drops Gorkha onto the Prithvi Highway; F021 matters because it carries Rasuwa and the Rasuwagadhi trade route down to the Kathmandu-area highways. When you plan a trip or a haul, the practical question is always 'which national highway does this feeder road put me on, and where?'

Names in the register are transliterated Nepali place names, so spellings vary between sources (Mirchaiya/Mirchiya, Chandragadhi/Chandragadi). If a search does not match, try an alternate romanisation or search by the district headquarters instead of the road name.

The federal restructuring of Nepal reshaped the feeder-road system. With the 2015 constitution creating seven provinces and empowering provincial and local governments to own roads, the Department of Roads reorganised the strategic network in its Statistics of National Highways (SNH) 2020/21. In that edition, most former feeder roads were either promoted to full national-highway status or handed over to the provincial governments as provincial highways and roads.

As a result, the standalone 'F' feeder-road category has largely been dissolved in the newest DoR statistics. The 2020/21 national-highway list expanded to around 80 national highways totalling roughly 11,178.92 km, absorbing many routes that had previously carried F-codes. Roads not elevated to national status became the backbone of the new provincial road networks, administered by each province rather than by the DoR.

For anyone researching a specific route today, this means a road you know as a feeder road may now appear under a national-highway (NH) number, or under a provincial classification, depending on how it was reassigned. The historical F-code remains valuable for tracing a road's identity across older maps, tender documents and studies, but the current legal owner and code should be checked against the latest DoR and provincial listings.

To confirm any feeder road's code, route and length, start with the Department of Roads. The SSRN publications (available through the DoR website) contain the register tables, and the DoR's online SSRN map lets you click a route to see its alignment and connecting highway. These are the primary, authoritative sources; secondary compilations such as Wikipedia and the OpenStreetMap Nepal feeder-road page can help you cross-check names and approximate lengths, but they inherit the DoR data and are not a substitute for it.

A reliable search strategy is to work from geography: identify the district and its headquarters, note which national highway runs nearest, and then find the feeder road that joins the two. Because feeder roads are defined by exactly that connection, this almost always surfaces the right route even when you do not remember its F-number. For post-2020 status — whether a road is now a national highway or a provincial road — check the latest DoR Statistics of National Highways and the relevant provincial infrastructure ministry.