Nepal Highway Codes Explained: NH Numbers, Old H Codes and Chainage

For decades, Nepali textbooks, maps and government documents referred to highways by 'H' numbers: H01 for the Mahendra Highway, H02 for the Tribhuvan Highway, H03 for the Araniko Highway. These codes were issued by the Department of Roads (DoR), the federal agency under the Ministry of Physical Infrastructure and Transport that manages the Strategic Road Network (SRN) — the collective name for Nepal's national highways and feeder roads. Under the old scheme, the SRN was a two-tier register: a short list of H-coded national highways (21 routes by 2020) sitting above a much longer list of F-coded feeder roads.

In May 2021 (Jestha 2078 BS), the DoR published the Statistics of National Highway (SNH) 2020/21, which scrapped the H/F structure and reorganised the entire federal network into 80 national highways numbered NH01 to NH80. Fifty-nine routes were added to the previous 21, most of them created by promoting former feeder roads and stitching shorter roads into longer named corridors. Feeder roads that did not become national highways were handed over to the newly formed provincial governments.

The reform was driven by federalism. The Constitution of Nepal 2072 BS (2015) divided road responsibilities among federal, provincial and local governments, so the DoR needed a clean register of purely federal routes. According to SNH 2020/21, the 80 national highways measured 11,178.92 km in service, a figure that grew to about 11,799 km by fiscal year 2079/80 (2022/23). Counting proposed extensions still to be built, the full planned network approaches 14,900 km.

A modern Nepali highway code has two parts: the prefix 'NH', which stands for National Highway, and a two-digit serial number from 01 to 80, always written with a leading zero for single digits (NH04, not NH4, in official statistics). The number itself does not encode a road's class, width or region by any formula. The sequence is broadly geographic: numbering begins in the far east — NH02 Mechi Highway and NH04 near the Mechi border — and generally moves westward, ending with far-western routes such as NH66 Mahakali Highway and NH67 Mahakali Corridor. Ring roads and some late additions (NH75 to NH80) sit at the end of the list regardless of location.

The three great east–west corridors were deliberately given the first odd slots: NH01 for the Mahendra Highway across the Tarai, NH03 for the Pushpalal Mid-Hill Highway through the middle hills, and NH05 for the Postal (Hulaki) Highway along the southern border belt. This makes the low odd numbers a quick mental shortcut for Nepal's three horizontal spines.

Under the pre-2021 scheme, 'H' marked a national highway and 'F' a feeder road — a road connecting district headquarters, markets or border points to a highway. The h number roads Nepal used were only ever 21 routes, whereas feeder codes started at F01 and, as the register grew through successive Statistics of Strategic Road Network (SSRN) editions, ran into three digits, with codes such as F130 and F208 appearing in DoR inventories. Because driving-licence exam books, older maps and many roadside kilometre stones still carry H and F codes, both systems remain in everyday circulation — the main source of confusion this page resolves.

The table below converts every well-documented old H code to its new NH number. Note that the conversion is not always one-to-one: several old highways were merged into longer new corridors. The Ratna Highway (H12, Nepalgunj–Surkhet) and the Karnali Highway (H13, Surkhet–Jumla) were combined into a single NH58 Karnali corridor running from Jamunaha on the Indian border to Hilsa on the Chinese border, and the old Seti Highway (H15) was absorbed into the NH03 Pushpalal corridor. The remaining late entries on the 21-route pre-2021 register, including a short Mahendra Highway–Brahmadev link coded H19, were likewise folded into new NH routes.

Nepal's road classes trace back to the Public Roads Act 2031 BS (1974), which grouped public roads into national highways, feeder roads, district roads and urban roads, a hierarchy carried into the Nepal Road Standard 2070 BS (2013). Feeder roads were the F-coded second tier of the Strategic Road Network: routes linking district headquarters, industrial areas, border customs points and tourist centres to the nearest national highway. The DoR's early registers listed 51 feeder roads (F01–F51) alongside just a dozen or so highways; the SSRN 2004 edition, for example, recorded 12 national highways and 51 feeder roads.

The 2021 reform effectively retired the feeder-road category from the federal register. Every F-coded road was either upgraded — alone or merged with neighbours — into one of the 80 new national highways, or transferred to a provincial government as a provincial road. The NH05 Postal Highway is a good example of consolidation: it was assembled from the old H17 plus a string of Tarai feeder roads including F16, F44 and F46. Provinces are now building their own provincial highway registers, while rural municipal roads formerly overseen through the Department of Local Infrastructure (DoLIDAR) sit with local governments.

Practically, this means an F number on an older map, detailed project report or signboard is not wrong — it is simply a pre-2021 reference. To trace where a feeder road went, look up its corridor in the SNH 2020/21 tables or match its termini against the NH lookup table at the end of this page.

NH03 is the Pushpalal Highway, officially the Madhya Pahadi Lokmarg or Mid-Hill Highway, named after communist leader Pushpa Lal Shrestha. It is planned to run about 1,787 km entirely through the middle hills, from Chiyo Bhanjyang in Panchthar district on the eastern border to Jhulaghat in Baitadi on the far-western border. Under the old system this project was coded H18, and sections of the former H15 Seti Highway were merged into it. It is Nepal's longest planned highway corridor, though substantial stretches remain under construction or unpaved.

NH05 is the Postal Highway, the Hulaki Rajmarg, the historic mail route hugging the southern Tarai belt from Bhadrapur in Jhapa to Beldandi in Kanchanpur, with a planned length of roughly 1,016 km. It predates the Mahendra Highway as an east–west route and was previously coded H17, supplemented by several F-series feeder links. Both corridors are being upgraded in phases, so lengths quoted in DoR statistics include sections not yet built to standard.

Here lies the biggest old-versus-new trap: under the pre-2021 scheme, H03 meant the Araniko Highway to the Kodari border and H05 meant the Narayanghat–Mugling road — completely different roads from today's NH03 and NH05. Whenever you see a bare 'H03' or 'H05' in a document, check its date: if it predates 2021 (2078 BS), it uses the old register. This page's conversion table above resolves each case.

Chainage is the engineering term for cumulative distance measured along a road's alignment from a defined zero point, normally the route's designated starting terminus as listed in DoR statistics. Nepal writes chainage in kilometres plus metres, separated by a plus sign: chainage 125+400 means a point 125 kilometres and 400 metres from the start of that highway. The format appears constantly in Nepali contract notices, bridge registers, road-condition surveys and news reports of accidents or landslides ('the blockage at chainage 27+500 of the Narayanghat–Mugling road').

On the ground, chainage is displayed on kilometre posts — the painted concrete stones on the roadside that show the distance travelled along the route and usually the name and remaining distance of the next major town. Because each highway has its own zero point, the number on a kilometre stone is meaningful only for that route; where two highways overlap, each maintains its own chainage. Bridges, culverts and road links in DoR inventories are all located by start and end chainage, which is why the same kilometre figures recur in tender documents year after year.

Physical signage has lagged the 2021 renumbering: many kilometre stones and route boards erected earlier still show old H or F references, and mapping platforms such as OpenStreetMap record the superseded code in a separate 'old reference' field. When navigating with older signs, convert the code using the table above rather than assuming the numbers match.

The list below is the complete Nepal highway code list under the current numbering, compiled from the Department of Roads' Statistics of National Highway 2020/21 as tabulated by Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Where a route has an official or popular name it is given; routes without names are identified by their termini. Lengths are approximate corridor totals from SNH 2020/21 and often include proposed extensions, so they can exceed the length actually built today. Old H codes are noted where a direct predecessor exists.

For anything written after 2021, use the NH code, ideally with the highway name on first mention: 'NH01 (Mahendra Highway)'. When quoting an older document, keep its original H or F code but add the current equivalent in brackets so readers are not misled. For locations along a route, pair the code with chainage — 'NH34, chainage 82+300' — which is how the DoR itself references bridges, landslide zones and contract sections.

Be careful with lengths. Because SNH 2020/21 records planned corridor totals, a highway's official length can differ from what is drivable: NH03 is listed near 1,787 km although long hill sections remain earthen or under construction, and NH58's 538 km includes high-Himalayan stretches toward Hilsa that are still being opened. When accuracy matters — for logistics, tenders or research — cross-check against the latest DoR annual statistics, which are updated each fiscal year, rather than relying on the founding 2020/21 figures.