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The Karakoram Highway follows a network of ancient trade routes linking the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar in western China with the Pakistani capital, Islamabad . Along the way it crosses the Khunjerab Pass (4800m, 15,750ft). During the 20 years it digested lives of many workers to push level and blast the present 1300km (800mi) highway through the mountains: over 400 road-builders died. The souls that paved the way for the modern tarmac road named the Karakoram Highway still seem to flicker amongst the sharp moving shadows of the rocks and the almost countless but crumbly lucent glaciers that constantly embellish its existence. There has always been a long pass into, and out of China over what is sometimes called the 'roof of the world' but in ancient times it was a very perilous pathway. Starting near Rawalpindi, the bitumen sealed motorway winds through gently rolling, sandy foothills for approximately one hundred and twenty kilometres before intersecting the Indus river. (Called the 'Sind' by the Urdu language speaking Pakistanis) it then twines along the Indus's arc north eastward to within forty kilometres of the town of Gilgit. 
Between these two points, (about four hundred kilometres) the road sometimes takes on a 'roller-coaster' aspect as it dips into, and out of the Indus's wide river bed. The final dip is at this forty kilometres point when the road joins the Gilgit river and continues to within twelve kilometres of the town of that name, then swings North, crossing the Gilgit river to join the Hunza river. The town of Gilgit is twelve kilometres off the actual Karakoram highway and is reached by a fairly smoothly laid and slightly inclined tarred road. Although the Karakoram Highway inclines upwards the whole way to the pass it's not until you get close to Gilgit that you begin to feel as if you are in mountains. Even so, the town is only at one thousand, five hundred meters (approx. five thousand feet) elevation and there is still a feeling of being in desert. The barren, dust laden and tan coloured hills that surround the area give the impression of being made from sand, however, it only takes a ride of a couple of kilometres north from Gilgit for one to get the impression of being in 'real' mountains - very high, and very sheer mountains. This is not to say that the actual road itself is steep - it's not, it's just that the demarcation between the almost sand dune like foothills, and the seemingly abrupt line of six to eight thousand meters high glacier and snow plaited mountains is almost overpoweringly awesome. The road then accompanies the Hunza river through these mountains, climbing gently almost all the way to the 4,700 metre high Khunjerab Pass. Only during the last twenty-odd kilometres from the top of the pass will you find short stretches of consistently steep road gradients of six to fourteen degrees. At the top of the pass, two tall memorial stones show that this is the convenient dividing line between political Pakistan, and political China. Both countries respective customs and immigration posts are some kilometres away on their respective sides of the pass. Sust, the Pakistan customs post is ninety kilometres before the peak. Taxgorgan, the Chinese customs post and town of that name, is one hundred and thirty kilometres from the peak. The pass also separates two differently named mountain ranges, the Karakoram range (on the Pakistani side), from the Pamir in China. Within these two massive ranges, there are other named but smaller clusters of rugged mountains, and a quick glance at a map can confuse one as there is no illustrated way that one can separate one range from the next. On the Chinese side of the pass the road is given a different name by the Chinese, who call it, loosely translated, 'The Big Pakistan/China Friendship Road'. This continuation of the Karakoram is also smoothly finished and well graded. It scrolls up and down through generally wide valleys for approximately four hundred and fifty kilometres to the camel market town of Kashgar, which is in the mostly Taklamakan desert filled Chinese province of Xinjiang. As most travellers consider the Karakoram highway and the Big Pakistan-China Friendship Road to be one and the same, I have done so in this guide, with the exception that I refer to the Chinese road(s) by their route numbers. All Chinese roads have designated route numbers and periodic 'kilometre' markers tell you what numbered road, or track you are on at any given time, for example, the Chinese side of the Karakoram road is route number 314, and you can stay on this route half way across China. The actual kilometre numbers on the stones don't seem to make any sense, and they certainly did not usually reflect accuracy as compared to both of our cyclometers, which always came out to within a hundred or so meters of each another at the end of every day. The numbers on the stones often showed a ten or fifteen kilometre difference to our daily total.
Between these two points, (about four hundred kilometres) the road sometimes takes on a 'roller-coaster' aspect as it dips into, and out of the Indus's wide river bed. The final dip is at this forty kilometres point when the road joins the Gilgit river and continues to within twelve kilometres of the town of that name, then swings North, crossing the Gilgit river to join the Hunza river. The town of Gilgit is twelve kilometres off the actual Karakoram highway and is reached by a fairly smoothly laid and slightly inclined tarred road. Although the Karakoram Highway inclines upwards the whole way to the pass it's not until you get close to Gilgit that you begin to feel as if you are in mountains. Even so, the town is only at one thousand, five hundred meters (approx. five thousand feet) elevation and there is still a feeling of being in desert. The barren, dust laden and tan coloured hills that surround the area give the impression of being made from sand, however, it only takes a ride of a couple of kilometres north from Gilgit for one to get the impression of being in 'real' mountains - very high, and very sheer mountains. This is not to say that the actual road itself is steep - it's not, it's just that the demarcation between the almost sand dune like foothills, and the seemingly abrupt line of six to eight thousand meters high glacier and snow plaited mountains is almost overpoweringly awesome. The road then accompanies the Hunza river through these mountains, climbing gently almost all the way to the 4,700 metre high Khunjerab Pass. Only during the last twenty-odd kilometres from the top of the pass will you find short stretches of consistently steep road gradients of six to fourteen degrees. At the top of the pass, two tall memorial stones show that this is the convenient dividing line between political Pakistan, and political China. Both countries respective customs and immigration posts are some kilometres away on their respective sides of the pass. Sust, the Pakistan customs post is ninety kilometres before the peak. Taxgorgan, the Chinese customs post and town of that name, is one hundred and thirty kilometres from the peak. The pass also separates two differently named mountain ranges, the Karakoram range (on the Pakistani side), from the Pamir in China. Within these two massive ranges, there are other named but smaller clusters of rugged mountains, and a quick glance at a map can confuse one as there is no illustrated way that one can separate one range from the next. On the Chinese side of the pass the road is given a different name by the Chinese, who call it, loosely translated, 'The Big Pakistan/China Friendship Road'. This continuation of the Karakoram is also smoothly finished and well graded. It scrolls up and down through generally wide valleys for approximately four hundred and fifty kilometres to the camel market town of Kashgar, which is in the mostly Taklamakan desert filled Chinese province of Xinjiang. As most travellers consider the Karakoram highway and the Big Pakistan-China Friendship Road to be one and the same, I have done so in this guide, with the exception that I refer to the Chinese road(s) by their route numbers. All Chinese roads have designated route numbers and periodic 'kilometre' markers tell you what numbered road, or track you are on at any given time, for example, the Chinese side of the Karakoram road is route number 314, and you can stay on this route half way across China. The actual kilometre numbers on the stones don't seem to make any sense, and they certainly did not usually reflect accuracy as compared to both of our cyclometers, which always came out to within a hundred or so meters of each another at the end of every day. The numbers on the stones often showed a ten or fifteen kilometre difference to our daily total.
