Khunjerab Pass

The Karakoram Highway stretches 1,300 kilometers from Hasan Abdal in Pakistan to Kashgar in China, tracing ancient Silk Road routes through some of Earth’s most formidable mountain terrain where the Himalaya, Karakoram, and Hindu Kush ranges converge. Construction began in 1966 as a joint Chinese-Pakistani strategic project during the Cold War; when it was completed in 1979 and finally opened to the public in 1986, approximately 810 Pakistani and 200 Chinese workers had perished—mostly in catastrophic landslides and falls from cliff faces—to carve this passage through the Karakoram Range. The Chinese workers who died during the two decades of construction are buried in a memorial cemetery in Gilgit that remains maintained by both governments.

At its highest point, the highway reaches 4,693 meters at Khunjerab Pass—the world’s highest paved international border crossing, connecting Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan to China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. The name derives from the Wakhi language: ‘khun’ meaning house and ‘jerab’ referring to a spring-fed creek, though local usage translates it as ‘Valley of Blood’ referencing the bandits who once preyed on Silk Road caravans. Before the highway’s completion, only the rough Mintaka and Kilik passes connected these regions, traversable solely by pack animals. Today the pass marks a transition between left-hand traffic in Pakistan and right-hand traffic in China, and hosts the world’s highest ATM operated by the National Bank of Pakistan at the border station.

Surrounding the pass lies Khunjerab National Park, Pakistan’s third-largest protected area at 226,913 hectares of high-altitude wilderness straddling the Karakoram Range. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto established the park on April 29, 1975, declaring that ‘it must become a world famous park.’ The boundaries were mapped by renowned wildlife biologist George Schaller of the Wildlife Conservation Society following a field survey in 1974, designed primarily to protect the endangered Marco Polo sheep—found in Pakistan only in this remote border region—whose population had plummeted to below 180 individuals by the time the Karakoram Highway was completed and vehicle traffic began disturbing their habitat.

Today the park shelters remarkable high-altitude biodiversity across elevations ranging from 3,400 to over 6,000 meters. Small herds of Marco Polo sheep with their magnificent spiraling horns spanning up to 140 centimeters graze alpine meadows alongside over 2,000 Siberian ibex, blue sheep, and small populations of brown bears and Tibetan wolves. Most remarkably, the park may contain the highest density of snow leopards in the entire Himalayan ecosystem, though sightings remain exceptionally rare. Golden marmots whistle alarm calls from burrows beside the highway, and 45 avian species patrol the skies including golden eagles, lammergeiers, Himalayan griffon vultures, and peregrine falcons. The park connects with China’s Taxkorgan Natural Reserve across the border, creating a 1.6-million-hectare transboundary wildlife corridor.

The 175-kilometer journey from Hunza Valley to Khunjerab Pass ranks among Earth’s great road trips, a full-day adventure through landscapes that shift from lush irrigated terraces to barren high-altitude steppe within hours. From Karimabad—where the 700-year-old Baltit Fort, once the seat of the Mir of Hunza, overlooks terraced apricot orchards beneath 7,788-meter Rakaposhi—the highway climbs past the turquoise expanse of Attabad Lake. This stunning 21-kilometer lake did not exist before January 4, 2010, when a catastrophic landslide at Attabad village dammed the Hunza River, buried the settlement beneath tons of debris, displaced 6,000 people, and submerged 19 kilometers of the original highway beneath waters now over 100 meters deep. New tunnels blasted through the mountainside bypass the drowned road sections.

Beyond Attabad, the highway passes through tunnels carved from living rock to reach the historic Wakhi villages of Gulmit and Passu, where the cathedral spires of Passu Cones—the 6,106-meter peak Tupopdan—pierce the sky while the famous Hussaini Suspension Bridge sways precariously over the glacier-fed Hunza River below. The last settlement is Sost, where Pakistan customs processes travelers and painted Bedford trucks carry goods between nations as they have for decades. From Sost, the highway enters Khunjerab National Park for the final 80-kilometer climb to the pass through alpine meadows where ibex graze distant ridges and the horizon fills with eternal snow. Allow a full day for this journey; the road alone justifies the entire trip to northern Pakistan.