TRAVERSE 27
TRAVEL- PAKISTAN
LEIGH WILKINS
ROAD OF STONE, RIVER OF SILENCE
The Karakoram Highway does not ease you into its presence gently. It slams into your life like an epiphany. Rising from the heat-baked plains of Punjab, the road claws through valleys and clings to cliffs that appear almost vertical, its surface scrawled into mountains that make the Alps look like afterthoughts. Engineers call it the highest paved road in the world. Truckers call it a curse, a livelihood, and sometimes a wife; unpredictable, temperamental, occasionally brutal, but impossible to live without.
We had been following the highway west for days, carried along its narrow ledges where the Indus churns a frothing, mud-brown torrent far below. The Karakoram is not just a road; it is Pakistan’ s jugular vein. It links Gilgit-Baltistan with Islamabad and Lahore, ties the frontier valleys to the south, and ultimately snakes its way into
Xinjiang through the Khunjerab Pass, the high-altitude notch that is also the official border between Pakistan and China. Without the KKH, entire regions wither into isolation.
Which is why, when the traffic stopped outside Harban, it felt as though a great artery had suddenly clotted.
At first, I assumed it was the usual rockfall— a boulder tossed carelessly onto the tarmac by some restless mountain. But as I rounded the bend, the scene shifted: a lengthy line of trucks stretched into the distance, engines cut, their paintwork glinting in the afternoon sun. Drivers lingered in tight clusters, voices low, the hiss of boiling kettles rising into the still air. It was too quiet for traffic, too orderly for chaos. Whatever had stalled the highway wasn’ t stone or dust, but something unseen, something everyone seemed to be
TRAVERSE 27