The Karakoram Highway or KKH in short, is the greatest wonder of modern Pakistan. It is one of the most spectacular roads in the world connecting Pakistan to China. It twists through three great mountain ranges - the Himalayas, Karakoram and Pamir -following one of the ancient silk routes along the valleys of the Indus, Gilgit and Hunza rivers to the Chinese border at the Khunjerab Pass. It then crosses the high Central Asian plateau before winding down through the Pamirs to Kashgar, at the Western edge of the Taklamakan Desert. By this route, Chinese silks, ceramics, lacquer-work, bronze, iron, fur and spices traveled west, while the wool, linen, ivory, gold, silver, precious and semi-precious stones, asbestos and glass of South Asia And the West traveled east.
For much of its 1,284 kms (905 miles) the Karakoram Highway is overshadowed by towering barren mountains and a high altitude desert enjoying less than 100 millimeters (four inches) of rain a year. In many of the gorges through which it passes, it rides a shelf cut into a sheer cliff face as high as 500 meters (1,600 feet) above the river. Click Here to EnlargeThe KKH has opened up Remote villages where little has changed in hundreds of years, where farmers irrigate tiny terraces to grow small patches of wheat, barley or maize that stand out like emeralds against the Grey, stony mountains. The highway is an incredible feat of Engineering and enduring monuments to the 810 Pakistanis and 82 Chinese who died forcing it through what is probably the world's most difficult and unstable terrain. (The unofficial death toll is somewhat higher, coming to nearly one life for each kilometer of the road). The Karakoram and the Himalayas, the newest mountain ranges in the world, began to form some 5 million years ago when the Indian sub-continent drifted northwards and rammed into the Asian landmass. By this time the dinosaurs were already extinct.
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