From London to Beijing on the old Silk Road

The road to the Pakistan-China border. At 4,700 metres above sea level the air is thin and it can be a struggle to breathe. The road that connects these two countries is called the Karakoram Highway or KKH. This 1,300km long road, which at points runs parallel to a branch of the old Silk Road, connects Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab in Pakistan with Xinjiang province in western China. Due to the difficult conditions under which it was constructed, it is sometimes referred to as the “Eighth Wonder of the World”.