Spanning some of the most rugged and re­mote mountains in the world, the KKH region is held together by several historical currents. These are the Silk Road and the spread of Buddhism; the arrival of Islam; imperial struggles, particularly the ‘Great Game’ be­tween Britain and Russia; and, of course, the Highway itself.

THE SILK ROAD & THE FLOWERING OF BUDDHISM

Buddhism spread throughout the northern subcontinent under the charismatic (and last) Mauryan king, Ashoka (272-232 BC), whose excesses in war led to his conversion and active patronage of the new philoso­phy. Soon after Ashoka’s death, however, the region descended into chaos with several invasions from Central Asia and a recur­ring Hindu backlash. Meanwhile, the Han dynasty in China was pushing its frontiers west and south over a growing network of trade routes that later came to be called the Silk Road.

From the early Han capital of Chang’an (now Xian), a line of oases skirted north and south around the Taklamakan Desert to Kashgar. From there, tracks ran west across the Pamir and Turkestan (Central Asia) to Persia (Iran), Iraq and the Mediterranean, and south across the Karakoram to Kashmir. Caravans went west with porcelain, silk, tea, spices and seeds of peach and orange, and brought back wool, gold, ivory, jewels and European delicacies such as figs and walnuts - as well as new ideas.

Bandits from Mongolia, Tibet and the little Karakoram state of Hunza made these expedi­tions dangerous, and Han emperors spent vast resources policing the road. Among the tribes driven south by the Han were the Yueh-chih (or Kushans) who, by the 1st century AD, con­trolled an empire spanning Kashgar, most of the Karakoram, the Hindukush and northern India. Under the Kushan dynasty, centred in Gandhara, Buddhism experienced an artistic and intellectual flowering and spread up the Indus into Central Asia, China and Tibet. The Silk Road became as much a cultural artery as a commercial one.

Buddhism left an extraordinary record in western China and northern Pakistan that can be seen while travelling along the KKH: the cave frescoes of San Xian outside Kashgar; the petroglyphs at Shatial, Chilas and Ganish; and the bas-relief Buddhas near Gilgit and Skardu.

THE ADVENT OF ISLAM & THE DECLINE OF THE SILK ROAD

Although an Arab expedition reached Kashgar in the 8th century, the earliest conversions to Islam in the Tarim Basin were by rulers of the Qarakhan dynasty in the 12th century. Today most non-Chinese there are Sunni Muslims. Almost simultaneously with the 8th-century Central Asia explorations, an Arab naval force arrived at the mouth of the Indus, but likewise left little religious imprint. It wasn’t until the 11th century that Islam began to establish itself in this region. Muslim Turkic raiders from Afghanistan, led by the warlord Mahmud of Ghazni, battered the Indus Valley in the early 11th century. Conversion to Islam was widespread, for pragmatic as much as spiritual reasons.

In the early 13th century the Mongol ar­mies of Genghis Khan had subdued Central Asia and had began raiding south into the

subcontinent. With the largest contiguous land empire in history, cleared of bandits and boundaries by the Mongols, the Silk Road enjoyed a last burst of activity into the 14th century. Europeans, now forced to take note of Asian power, also took an interest in Asia; Marco Polo made (or made up) his epic journeys during this time. The subsequent eclipse of the Silk Road has been variously attributed to the arrival of Islam, the col­lapse of the Mongols, and the drying up of oasis streams.

The final nail in the Silk Road’s cof­fin was the discovery in 1497 of a sea route from Europe around Africa to India by the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. By this time the entire region now spanned by the KKH was Muslim, but it was in total disar­ray, fractured by quarrelling remnants of the Mongol empire in the north, petty chieftains in the mountains, successors of the 14th-century invader from Central Asia, Tamerlane (Timur), and Pashtun tribes in the south.

THE BRITISH, PARTITION & THE NORTHERN AREAS

In 1846 the British annexed the Sikh ter­ritories of Kashmir, Ladakh, Baltistan and the Gilgit-Hunza basin. Packaging them up as the State of Jammu & Kashmir, they sold them to the Hindu prince Gulab Singh and declared him the first Maharaja of Kashmir. Then Britain discovered Russia snooping in the Pamir and Afghanistan. In 1877 a British political agent arrived to look over the Kashmiri governor’s shoulder. The ar­rangement proved awkward and the British Agency was closed after a few years - only to reopen in 1889 as Britain’s anxiety mounted over Russia’s presence in the region. The new political agent was Captain Algernon Durand, who believed that to counter foreign influence in India all its frontier tribes would eventually have to be subjugated or bought off. He carried on his own foreign policy in the area, invading Hunza in 1891 and trying unsuccessfully to subdue Chilas in 1892-93. In 1935 Britain leased back the entire Agency from Kashmir and raised a local militia, the Gilgit Scouts.

At Partition in 1947 Maharaja Hari Singh, hoping for his own independence, stalled for two months before finally acceding to India. Gilgit and the surrounding valleys rose in re­volt (see the boxed text, p275) and demanded to join Pakistan. India and Pakistan then went to war over Kashmir.

In the UN ceasefire that followed, Pakistan got temporary control over what is now the Northern Areas (NA), plus a slice of western Kashmir. The resulting closure of the Burzil Pass left only the Babusar Pass linking the NA to the rest of Pakistan until around 40 years ago, when construction began on the KKH and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) began flights. The two countries went to war again in 1965 and 1971, and peri­odically skirmish over Siachen Glacier in eastern Baltistan.

Pakistan’s official position is that until a vote by the people of Kashmir (as speci­fied in the 1947 ceasefire terms) is held, Kashmir doesn’t belong to anyone. This leaves the NA in limbo, because making it a province would concede the status quo of a divided Kashmir.

In 1969 the residual autonomy of former ministates like Hunza and Nagyr was abol­
ished. Now they’re all governed by the 24- member Northern Areas Council, headed by a federally appointed chief executive. The gov­ernment is generous with development money and levies no direct taxes, but Northerners cannot, for example, vote in national elec­tions. Having fought to join Pakistan, many now feel excluded.

Nevertheless, the region has acquired many of the political features of a province. Northern Areas Council members are all locally elected and can now campaign on the basis of political party affiliation. They in turn elect the deputy chief executive, with the rank of a minister of state in Pakistan. On his/her advice, the chief executive appoints four advisers with the rank of provincial ministers.

Following its invasion of Tibet in 1950, China occupied parts of Ladakh, Baltistan and the upper Shimshal Valley in the mid-1950s. All traffic across the border stopped. While the Chinese border with Indian-held Kashmir is still in dispute today, a thaw in China- Pakistan relations in 1964 led to a border agreement, China’s return of 2000 sq km of territory, and talk of linking the two countries by road.

In 1966 the two countries embarked on one of the biggest engineering projects since the Pyramids: a two-lane, 1200km road across some of the highest mountains in the world, the Pamir and the Karakoram, from Kashgar in China to Havelian in Pakistan. Much of the KKH would traverse terrain that until then had barely allowed a donkey track. It was to be 20 years before it was fully open.

Pakistan had already started a road of its own in 1960, the 400km Indus Valley Rd between Swat and Gilgit. This and a road north from Havelian were completed in 1968 and linked by a bridge at Thakot. Between then and 1973, Pakistani crews worked north from the Indus, while the Chinese cut a road over the Khunjerab Pass to Gulmit, as well as north from the Khunjerab to Kashgar. All of the nearly 100 bridges encoun­tered from the Khunjerab to Thakot were originally Chinese-built.

Chinese workers departed in early 1979, and later that year the KKH was declared complete in Pakistan. In August 1982 the Highway was formally inaugurated, the NA were opened to tourism as far as Passu, and the Khunjerab Pass was opened to official traffic and cross-border trade. On 1 May 1986 the Khunjerab Pass and the road to Kashgar were opened to tourism.

The workforce in Pakistan at any one time was about 15,000 Pakistani soldiers and be­tween 9000 and 20,000 Chinese, working separately. Landslides, savage summer and winter conditions, and accidents claimed 400 to 500 lives on the Pakistani side of the bor­der, roughly one for every 1.5km of roadway (though some claim the Chinese took away many more dead than they admitted). The highest toll was in Indus Kohistan.

Few statistics are available about work on the Chinese side. Crews there were a mixture of soldiers, convicts and paid volunteers with nothing but picks and shovels, hauling rocks and dirt on shoulder-poles.

Maintenance is a huge and endless job. The mountains continually try to reclaim the road, assisted by earthquakes, encroaching glaciers and the Karakoram’s typical crumbling slopes. Rockfalls and floods are routine, and travel is inherently unpredictable.