Construction Challenges of Bridges in Hilly Area

Himalaya since Vedic times have been considered a vast repository of valuable medicinal herbs, minerals, forest resources etc. Vedic literature followed by the writings of Charaks, Susruta, Dhanwantri, Nagarjuna, Parashar, Balmiki and various other saints, bear testimony to it. "Alexander, The Great", who was much influenced because of its scenic beauty, bracing climate and agroclimatic conditions, made a great publicity of the Himalayan Herb Science in Yunan and Rome during middle ages (Anonymous, 1977; Chauhan, 1988). This potential, however, remained unexploited especially in higher reaches due to inadequate means of communication. After independence, Govt. of India, gave a special emphasis on road construction in order to bring socio-economic upliftment of tribal inhabitants. But due to lack of proper planning it resulted in serious ecological imbalances. Society has now become aware of the environmental consequences resulting from road construction in hill areas. Right from the days of Vedas, our country has an age-old tradition of environment consciousness. During Samrat Ashok's days social forestry was at its full swing having shady trees along the roads and fruit plants on the wastelands. In this paper efforts have been made to incorporate the latest techniques for protecting the environment after extensive survey of literature (Lone et al., 1992 and Chauhan.