- Gordon Dumoulin
Sometimes dubbed China's most beautiful highway...
𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘥𝘶𝘣𝘣𝘦𝘥 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘢'𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘺....
530 km Duku Highway (Dushanzi-Kuqa Highway) runs in the far west of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and is a section of the 1,750 km China National Highway G217 from Northern Altay city at the foot of the Altay mountains south-west to Hotan city located in the Tarim Basin, mostly covered by the Taklamakan Desert.
Built in the 1970's and opened to public in 1983, the highway cut about 1,000 km travel distance from South to North Xinjiang, connecting isolated rural populations in the mountains to the outside world.
The splendid Duku section runs through the Tianshan mountains with snow peaks, green valleys and high grasslands. Most of the Duku highway (独库公路) runs above 2,000 meters with its highest elevation on 3,200 meters.
The highway is closed from October until May/June due to weather conditions and in 2019, almost 600,000 vehicles and 1.7 million tourists visited the Duku highway region.
𝗔 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱...