The tunnel is part of the proposed Mumbai-Pune Expressway, work on which is well underway in all four sections from Panvel to Dehu Road.

And if the present pace of work is sustained, the expressway may even be completed a couple of months ahead of the January 2000 deadline. The gigantic project involves everything from transplantation and plantation of trees, levelling of land, building bridges, carving out tunnels and finally, laying the concrete road.

At Kon near Panvel, the starting point of the expressway, Prasad Latkar, a Pune-based urban management consultant, stops near a tree and caresses its new leaves. The tree is special for Latkar;it is one of the 132 fully grown trees coming in the way of the construction that he helped transplant along the expressway. ``We will take utmost care to protect the environment while constructing the expressway,'' he assures. ``Instead of cutting them down mercilessly, we will transplant 500 big trees along the expressway. Also, a total of 70,000 trees will be planted to maintain environmental conditions,'' he adds.

A few hundred metres ahead, a couple of road rollers move back and forth, levelling heaps of soil. Venture closer and you feel the earth vibrating. ``It is a new levelling technique,'' explains Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) executive engineer Jagdish Mahale. ``If you generate vibrations while pressing the soil, it yields the best results. As the expressway will be about 1 m thick, each of its six layers must have adequate density. Such levelling will ensure that the road has the same gradient for every 500 m, which will allow a driving speed of 120 km per hour,''Mahale concludes.

A few kilometres ahead is the site of the Bhatan tunnel which will be more than a kilometre long and 34 m wide, making it the widest tunnel in the country. A monster stone-crusher at the site chews up rocks, spitting out crushed stone. The eco-friendly crusher does not raise clouds of dust like its Indian counterparts and is capable of producing 50 truckfulls of crushed stone. This is the first time it is being used in India, thus heralding the advent of `new-generation' machinery in construction.

A little further, D G Diwate, chief project manager of the Konkan Railway Corporation, which handles construction of all five tunnels on the expressway, is battling the strongest rock in the state the black compact basalt. ``It is so hard to break this rock, that despite using blasting and other modern technology, we are progressing only 3.5 m everyday,'' he says.

Gadkari, who is also chairman of MSRDC, is confident that the 87-km long, 40 m wide, six-lane expressway will enable motoriststo travel from Mumbai to Pune in two hours flat. ``It will save time, fuel and the harassment of being held up in traffic jams,'' he points out. ``I think everyone will happily pay the toll for using the expressway. A charge of Rs 60 per car, Rs 130 per bus and Rs 150 per truck is not exorbitant. If you want to use the best services, you have to pay for them.''