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.
Khardung La70 mi · 2 h 26 min · 35 hairpinsView the roadbook ›
Summit
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1
5,338 msummit
Khardung La
The road over Khardung La (5,359 m) is one of the world’s highest motorable passes, a stunning arc from the Indus Valley at Leh over the Ladakh Range into the sand-dune wilderness of Nubra.
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2
5,266 msummitLeh–Manali Highway
A 479 km odyssey over five Himalayan passes including Baralacha La and Tanglang La, connecting Manali to Leh across one of the most savage and beautiful high-altitude landscapes on earth.
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3
4,703 msummitKarakoram Highway
Threading the Hunza Valley where the Hindu Kush, Himalaya and Karakoram converge, this is the centrepiece of one of the planet’s great road journeys.
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4
4,535 msummitSpiti Valley Road
NH505 through Spiti is one of the toughest roads left on earth, a 275 km traverse of a lunar cold-desert gorge crossing the 4,551 m Kunzum La and threading cliff edges above the turquoise Spiti River.
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5
4,151 msummitBabusar Pass
One of the most hairpinned roads in the world, cresting the 4,173 m Babusar Pass above the clouds with Nanga Parbat on the horizon.
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6
2,490 msummitTribhuvan Highway
Nepal’s oldest national highway climbs through the Mahabharata Range in a relentless series of hairpins to Daman, widely regarded as the finest Himalaya viewpoint in the country.
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7
2,282 msummitGilgit–Skardu Road
Carved into the cliffs above the roaring Indus, this nerve-racking gorge drive is the sole road link between Skardu and the outside world.
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8
1,491 msummitSiddhartha Highway
One of Nepal’s most exciting mountain highways descends from Pokhara through the Lower Himalayan ridges in a relentless sequence of hairpins past jungle slopes, rice terraces and the Newari town of Tansen.
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