Karakoram Highway - The Highway

The Highway

The highway, connecting the Gilgit–Baltistan region of Pakistani Kashmir to the ancient Silk Road, runs approximately 1,300 km (810 mi) from Kashgar, a city in the Xinjiang region of China, to Abbottabad, of Pakistan. An extension of the highway south west from Abbottabad, in the form of N-35, meets the Grand Trunk Road, N-5 at Hassanabdal, Pakistan.

The highway cuts through the collision zone between the Eurasian and Indian plates, where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan come within 250 km of each other. Owing largely to the extremely sensitive state of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, the Karakoram highway has strategic and military importance.

On June 30, 2006, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the Pakistani Highway Administration and China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) to rebuild and upgrade the Karakoram Highway. According to SASAC, the width of the highway will be expanded from 10 metres to 30 metres, and its transport capacity will be increased three times. As well, the upgraded road will be constructed to particularly accommodate heavy-laden vehicles and extreme weather conditions.

China and Pakistan are also planning to link the Karakoram Highway to the southern port of Gwadar in Balochistan through the Chinese-aided Gwadar-Dalbandin railway, which extends up to Rawalpindi.

Since 2 p.m. January 4, 2010, the KKH has been closed in the Hunza Valley, eliminating through traffic to China except by small boats. A massive landslide 15 km upstream from Hunza's capital of Karimabad created the potentially unstable Attabad Lake which reached 22 km in length and over 100 meters in depth by the first week of June 2010 when it finally began flowing over the landslide dam. The landslide destroyed parts of villages while killing many inhabitants, while the subsequent lake displaced thousands and inundated over 20 km of the KKH including the 310 m long KKH bridge 4 km south of Gulmit. It is highly questionable whether the lake, which reached 27 km in length in 2011, will drain. Goods from and to further north are transported over the lake by small vessels, to be reloaded onto trucks at the other end.