The Karakoram Highway (KKH) is a roughly 1,300 km road linking Hasan Abdal, near Islamabad in Pakistan, with Kashgar in China's Xinjiang region, crossing the border at the Khunjerab Pass (about 4,693 m), which makes it the highest paved international border crossing in the world. Known as the N-35 in Pakistan and as part of China National Highway 314 on the Chinese side, it was built by Pakistani and Chinese crews between 1959 and 1979 and opened to foreign travellers in 1986.
The clearest way to understand the road is to drive it: from the hot plains of Punjab, up the gorge of the Indus, through Gilgit and the Hunza valley, over the watershed into China and down to the oasis of Kashgar. The road climbs from about 500 m to almost 4,700 m and drops back to under 1,300 m.
Hasan Abdal to Thakot: the Foothills of Hazara
The N-35 starts at Hasan Abdal, about 45 km northwest of Islamabad. From here the old road runs northeast through the Hazara region: Haripur, Havelian, Abbottabad (at roughly 1,250 m, home of the Pakistan Military Academy) and Mansehra. It is green, populated country that gives no hint of what lies further north.
The southern end has changed more than any other part of the route in the last decade. Under the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the Hazara Motorway (E35/M-15) was built as a faster, divided-carriageway alternative from the Hasan Abdal area through Havelian toward Mansehra and Thakot, with the northern section opening around 2019–2020.
At Thakot a bridge crosses the Indus, and the road enters the river's gorge.
Through Kohistan and the Indus Gorge to Nanga Parbat
North of Thakot the highway enters Kohistan, a district whose name means simply "land of mountains". Towns such as Besham, Pattan and Dasu sit on narrow shelves above the river, and the road is carved into the gorge wall. This section is low, around 600 to 1,000 m, and very hot in summer. It is also where landslides and rockfall most often close the road after heavy rain. The Dasu and Diamer-Bhasha dam reservoirs will flood parts of this route, so it is being realigned.
Beyond Shatial and Chilas the valley opens into a dry, stony landscape. The cliffs and boulders here carry thousands of rock carvings and inscriptions, from Buddhist stupas to Sogdian, Brahmi and Chinese texts, left by travellers on branches of the ancient Silk Road between roughly the 1st millennium BC and the 16th century. The geography of the Silk Road explains why these routes threaded through the Indus gorges.
A little past Chilas, at Raikot Bridge, the road passes the foot of Nanga Parbat (8,126 m), the ninth-highest mountain on Earth. It rises roughly 7,000 m above the river, and Raikot is the jeep turn-off for Fairy Meadows. The mountain's grim climbing history is covered in our guide to Nanga Parbat, the "killer mountain".
Near Jaglot comes one of the strangest geographical points in Asia. Close to the confluence of the Gilgit and Indus rivers, a roadside monument marks the meeting of three great ranges: the Himalaya to the south and east, the Hindu Kush to the west and the Karakoram to the north. The rock here, squeezed between the Indian and Eurasian plates, is badly fractured.
Gilgit, Hunza and the Wall of Rakaposhi
The highway does not enter Gilgit town itself but passes just to the east of it, crossing the Gilgit River near Danyor. Gilgit, at about 1,500 m, is the administrative capital of Gilgit-Baltistan and the main supply town of the north. Danyor holds the Chinese cemetery for workers who died building the road.
From here the road follows the Hunza River northward and climbs steadily. Around Ghulmet, the 7,788 m summit of Rakaposhi stands almost directly above the road, its north face dropping close to 6,000 m to the river in a single sweep. Then come Aliabad and the hillside village of Karimabad, the centre of central Hunza at around 2,400 m. Above Karimabad stands Baltit Fort, the old seat of the Mirs of Hunza, whose oldest parts are thought to be around 700 years old. It was restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and opened as a museum in 1996, and nearby Altit Fort is older still.
Attabad Lake, Passu and Sost: Upper Hunza
On 4 January 2010, a massive landslide fell into the Hunza River at the village of Attabad, killing around 20 people and blocking the river completely. The water backed up behind the debris dam into a lake more than 20 km long, which drowned roughly the same length of the highway and several villages, including part of Shishkat. For five years, the road north was cut, and trucks and passengers crossed the lake by boat. China Road and Bridge Corporation then built a bypass of about 24 km including five tunnels with a combined length of roughly 7 km, opened in September 2015. Attabad Lake, turquoise with glacial silt, is now a major tourist stop.
At Passu the road runs below the serrated spires of the Passu Cones (the Tupopdan massif, about 6,100 m), and the snouts of the Passu and Batura glaciers reach almost to the roadside. The Batura Glacier, roughly 57 km long, is one of the longest glaciers outside the polar regions. The mountains of this stretch are covered in our guide to the Karakoram range.
Sost, at around 2,800 m, is the last real town in Pakistan and was long the site of Pakistani customs and immigration; the main border facilities have since moved north toward the pass. Beyond Sost the road enters Khunjerab National Park, established in 1975 partly to protect Marco Polo sheep and snow leopards, and climbs through a series of switchbacks to the Khunjerab Pass at about 4,693 m. A stone gateway marks the frontier. The pass is normally closed to traffic in winter, roughly from early December to early April, because of snow, although the exact dates are set each year by the two governments.
Khunjerab to Kashgar: the Chinese Side
Across the pass the road becomes China National Highway 314 and descends onto the open, high plateau of the eastern Pamirs. Wide grassy valleys replace the gorges, and the road surface is smooth.
Tashkurgan, at around 3,100 m, is the main town on this side and the centre of China's Tajik community. Chinese immigration and customs for the crossing are handled here. On the edge of town stand the ruins of the Stone City, a Silk Road fortress; the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang passed through on his way back from India in the 7th century.
North of Tashkurgan the highway passes Karakul Lake, at about 3,600 m, lying beneath Muztagh Ata (7,546 m) and Kongur Tagh (7,649 m), two of the highest peaks of the Pamir region. It then plunges through the Gez River gorge, past the pale sand-covered mountains around Bulunkul, and descends to the Tarim Basin and the oasis city of Kashgar, at about 1,290 m.
Building the KKH: Twenty Years in Unstable Mountains
Work on what became the KKH began in 1959, when Pakistan started improving the track up the Indus valley known as the Indus Valley Road. After the 1963 boundary agreement between Pakistan and China settled the frontier in this area, the two countries agreed to extend the road across the Khunjerab. Pakistan's army engineers and its Frontier Works Organization built most of the Pakistani section, while Chinese crews worked on the northern Pakistani stretch and the Chinese side. The road was completed around 1978–1979; the Khunjerab crossing opened to cross-border trade in 1982 and to foreign tourists in 1986.
Much of the road was blasted and dug by hand, and many workers died. Estimates of the death toll vary by source, typically ranging from around 800 to about 1,000, with a commonly quoted Pakistani figure of more than 800 and up to 200 Chinese deaths.
The dangers did not end when construction did. The road is regularly cut by landslides and glacial debris flows in summer, and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake damaged the southern sections. Since 2008 the Chinese company CRBC has been widening and rebuilding the Raikot to Khunjerab section, including the Attabad tunnels. Even so, closures of a few days are routine.
Karakoram Highway vs Pamir Highway (M41)
The KKH's nearest rival as a high-altitude Asian road journey is the Pamir Highway, the M41, which runs across the Tajik Pamirs from Dushanbe through Khorog and Murghab to Osh in Kyrgyzstan.
- Length: both are on the order of 1,200 to 1,300 km, depending on where each is measured from.
- Highest point: the KKH tops out at the Khunjerab Pass, about 4,693 m. The Pamir Highway's highest point is the Ak-Baital Pass, about 4,655 m, so the two are within a few tens of metres of each other.
- Age: the Pamir Highway is older. The Soviet Union built its main sections in the early 1930s. The KKH dates from 1959–1979.
- Road condition: the KKH is largely paved and, on the Chinese side and in upper Hunza, in very good shape. Long stretches of the M41 are broken asphalt or gravel, with little traffic and few services.
- Landscape: the KKH is a road of deep gorges with peaks of over 7,000 m close above it. The Pamir Highway spends much of its length on the high, arid plateau around Murghab, at over 3,500 m, where the mountains look lower because the road itself is so high.
- Purpose: the KKH is an active trade artery and part of a major Chinese investment corridor. The M41 is mostly a local lifeline.
The short version: the KKH is more dramatic and better built, while the Pamir Highway is lonelier, rougher and spends more time at extreme altitude. Neither is the world's highest road overall; several roads in Ladakh and Tibet climb higher, as the list of the highest roads in the world shows, but the Khunjerab remains the highest point on any paved road crossing between two countries.