Nepal Built a Glass Platform That Juts Into Thin Air 1,420 Metres Up — and 300,000 People Have Already Walked Onto It

Most people picture a first trip to Nepal ending at Everest Base Camp or the Annapurna Sanctuary. Almost nobody pictures it ending on a glass floor jutting out over a 1,420-metre drop in a hill station most foreign trekkers have never heard of — but that is exactly what is pulling growing crowds to Bhedetar, in Nepal's far east.

The Bhedetar Skywalk opened at Charles Point, above Bhedetar Chowk in Dhankuta district's Sagurigadhi Rural Municipality, a cool hill station 16 kilometres from the city of Dharan. It is a cantilever platform — 41 metres long, 2 metres wide, 18.5 metres above its base — built to hold around 25 visitors at a time on its glass-floored walkway, looking straight down at nothing but forest canopy and terraced hillside.

From sleepy viewpoint to tourism economy

Bhedetar was already known regionally as “the cooler of the east,” a weekend escape for Dharan and Biratnagar offering distant views toward Kanchenjunga, Makalu and, on the clearest mornings, Everest itself. What the skywalk did was turn a scenic stop into a destination in its own right.

The numbers built fast. In its first six weeks alone, the skywalk drew more than 22,000 visitors — over 300 on an average day, more than 2,000 on a single Saturday, according to figures reported by The Rising Nepal. Two years on, cumulative visitor numbers have passed 312,000, and operator Sanjeev Rokaya says transactions tied to the skywalk reached NPR 90 million in one fiscal year alone. Hotel and restaurant owners in Bhedetar report the spillover directly: tourists who come for the platform stay for tea, a meal, or a night, in a town that had little reason to keep visitors overnight before.

The project was built for roughly NPR 200 million — about $1.5 million — through a partnership between the private developer Wonders Amusement Parks and Attractions, the Koshi Provincial Government, and the local community, according to Kantipur's business desk. Some of that return has flowed back locally: the operator has funded cash prizes for top-scoring students at two nearby secondary schools, a small but visible sign of how directly the attraction is now woven into Bhedetar's economy.

What this means for travelers

Our own guides route travelers through this corner of the country on the way to the two big eastern treks: the Kanchenjunga Base Camp Trek, which shares the same mountain range visible from Bhedetar's platform, and the Makalu Base Camp Trek, both of which pass through Biratnagar and Dharan before the trailhead. If you'd rather stay closer to Kathmandu but still want a quieter alternative to the standard routes, our guide to which Nepal trek to choose if you want to avoid the crowds covers exactly that trade-off. A stop at the skywalk on the way in or out costs an afternoon and gives you the same eastern Himalaya skyline your trek is about to walk toward — just from 1,420 metres up, on a glass floor, instead of a trail.

Source: The Rising Nepal.

Cover photo: Sifat via Pexels (Pexels License).