Guide
The best driving roads in the Himalayas
The Himalaya and Karakoram hold the highest drivable roads on earth. The Karakoram Highway climbs from Pakistan’s river gorges toward the roof of the world, the Leh-Manali threads a string of passes above the snowline, and Khardung La is among the highest roads anyone can drive. These are the finest we have mapped across Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bhutan, every height taken from real road geometry.
Leh–Manali Highway264 mi · 10 h 14 min · 100 hairpinsView the roadbook ›
Summit
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1
5,332 msummit
Leh–Manali Highway
Not a drive but an expedition, and the Himalaya at its most savage and beautiful. Four hundred and seventy-nine kilometres and five passes from the green Kullu Valley to the moonscape of Ladakh: Rohtang first, then the arid Lahaul plateau, then Baralacha La at 4,890 m, Lachulung La, and finally Tanglang La at 5,328 m, much of the road averaging over 4,000 m with unpaved stretches and water crossings. It is open barely five months a year and demands a prepared vehicle, spare fuel and real humility about altitude. This is the hardest and greatest drive on the list, a two-day traverse where the road itself is the destination. Acclimatise properly, carry everything, and treat the mountains with the seriousness they demand.
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2
157 milongKarakoram Highway
The highest paved border crossing on the planet, and the only road where three great ranges stand in one windscreen. From Gilgit the highway threads the Hunza gorge beneath Rakaposhi, past the Passu Cones, with Nanga Parbat to the south, to the Khunjerab Pass at 4,693 m on the Chinese frontier, sheer rock on one side and the river far below on the other. Where the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush collide, the engineering reads as pure defiance. It is open April to November, and landslides and rockfall are facts of life rather than hazards. Drive it slowly, stop often in the Hunza valley, and accept that no photograph has ever done this convergence of mountains justice.
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3
5,360 msummitKhardung La
One of the world’s highest motorable passes, and a rite of passage. From Leh the road climbs forty kilometres through the South Pullu checkpoint to the summit at 5,359 m, asphalt giving way to loose gravel near the top where the air holds barely half the oxygen of sea level, then descends the far side into the sand-dune wilderness of the Nubra Valley. That transition, from the Indus Valley over a five-thousand-metre wall into a high-altitude desert of camels and dunes, is pure Ladakh. Traffic is one-way by time of day near the top. Drive it acclimatised, in summer, and do not linger at the summit where altitude sickness comes fast. Few roads on earth take you this high.
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4
4,175 msummitBabusar Pass
Above the clouds, with Nanga Parbat on the horizon. The N-15 climbs from the Kaghan Valley resort of Naran through relentless switchbacks to Babusar Pass at 4,173 m, the highest paved point in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the summit plateau opens onto wide alpine meadows and an unobstructed view of Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain on earth, before the descent to the Indus at Chilas. It is one of the most hairpinned roads in the world, a stack of bends climbing into thin bright air. Open only in the short summer, snowbound the rest of the year. Drive it on a clear day for the Nanga Parbat view, mind the altitude, and savour one of Pakistan’s most beautiful high crossings.
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5
3,806 msummitChele La
Bhutan’s highest road, and a climb through a rhododendron forest into prayer flags. Leaving Paro via Bondey, the road climbs on narrow, steep asphalt through continuous hairpins, dense pine, oak and rhododendron lining both sides, to the 3,988 m summit ridge where thousands of prayer flags snap in the wind and, on a clear day, the sacred peak of Jomolhari fills the horizon. The descent drops into the quiet, undeveloped Haa valley on the far side. This is the Buddhist Himalaya at its most serene, a road that feels like a pilgrimage. Drive it in spring when the rhododendrons bloom or autumn for the clear views, and stop at the flag-hung summit for Jomolhari.
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6
2,507 msummitTribhuvan Highway
Nepal’s oldest highway, and its finest Himalayan grandstand. From Naubise west of Kathmandu the Rajpath ascends through dense forest in tight hairpins, 107 kilometres of switchbacks to cover just thirty-two as the crow flies, crowned by Daman at 2,322 m, widely regarded as the best Himalayan viewpoint in the country, a full panorama from Dhaulagiri to Everest on a clear dawn. Then the long descent through the Siwalik Hills to the plains. This is the historic road that first connected Kathmandu to India, all switchback and forest and mountain view. Drive it in the clear post-monsoon months, overnight near Daman for the sunrise panorama, and take the endless hairpins as they come.
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7
1,556 msummitSiddhartha Highway
Nepal’s most exciting mountain highway, and a hairpin descent through history. Leaving Pokhara the highway plunges into the green hills of the Mahabharata Range, winding south through Syangja to the historic walled Newari town of Tansen, the Butwal-to-Palpa section the most testing: rocky, rockfall-prone and tight, before the Ramdi bridge over the sacred Kali Gandaki and the run down to the plains. It strings together jungle slopes, rice terraces and one of the prettiest hill towns in the country. This is the middle Himalaya at driving scale, all switchback and terrace and river. Drive it in the dry months, break the journey at Tansen, and mind the rockfall on the Palpa descent.
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8
173 milongSpiti Valley Road
One of the toughest roads left on earth, through a lunar cold desert. NH505 follows the Spiti River gorge from Khab Sangam north-west through the ancient monastery villages of Nako, Tabo and Kaza, then climbs the 4,551 m Kunzum La and drops down the Chandra valley to the Leh-Manali road, much of the Kaza-to-Gramphoo section unpaved and clinging to cliff edges above the turquoise river. This is Buddhist high Himalaya at its most remote, a treeless cold desert of whitewashed gompas and prayer flags where the road is often the only sign of the modern world. Drive it in the short summer window, in a capable vehicle, and give the altitude and the exposure the respect they demand.
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9
92 milongThrumshing La Road
The great cliff descent of eastern Bhutan. East of Ura the Lateral Road winds up through fir and rhododendron to the prayer-flagged saddle of Thrumshing La at 3,780 m, the gateway between central and eastern Bhutan, but the drama is the far side: a relentless, narrow, guardrail-free shelf carved into near-vertical cliffs, falling more than three thousand metres into subtropical valleys. It is one of the most sustained and exposed descents in the Himalaya, a road where you lose the height of a major mountain in a single afternoon of switchbacks. Drive it slowly, in the dry, with full concentration on the cliff sections, and watch the alpine forest give way to warm green valleys far below.
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10
128 milongGilgit–Skardu Road
A lifeline blasted into a gorge. Highway S-1 follows the Indus gorge for 167 kilometres between Gilgit and Skardu, the gateway to K2 and the great Karakoram peaks, cut into vertical cliff faces with sheer drops to the roaring river far below. Paved by 2021, which transformed a notorious ordeal into a merely spectacular one, it remains the sole road link between Baltistan and the outside world and still closes for landslides. This is raw Karakoram driving, a road that exists purely because the mountains left no other way through. Drive it in daylight, mind the rockfall, and take in a gorge landscape on a scale that makes the human road feel like a thread.
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