From the rainforests of Bolivia to the towering peaks of the Himalayas, today we look at 10
Roads You Would Never Want To Drive On!
Number 10.
James Dalton Road, Alaska James Dalton Road in Alaska is one of the
few roads in the world where it is highly recommended that you travel with survival
gear in case of emergencies.
On this 414-mile extremely northern route there are only three stops — three towns
— so there are also only three gas stations, and three places for provisions.
The only medical facilities are at the beginning and ends of the trip.
There is nothing in-between.
The road itself is famous for its appearance on several television shows, such as “Ice
Road Truckers” and the BBC’s “World’s Most Dangerous Roads.”
It’s got some colorful nicknames too, inspired by its treacherous reputation, such as “Oil
Spill Hill” and “Oh Shoot Corner.”
There are only three towns between Fairbanks, Alaska in the south and Deadhorse, Alaska
in the north, but this fact illustrates the isolation in that frozen region, and how alone
you really are if you drive the James Dalton Road unaccompanied, as so many truckers do.
Number 9.
Leh–Manali Highway Open only four and a half months a year, when
the high mountain snows are cleared out, the 298-mile Leh-Manali highway in India is one
of the most treacherous in the world.
Winding up along the Himalaya mountains, this dirt gravel path ranges in altitude between
2-3 miles above sea level, connecting Leh in Kashmir and Manali in Himachal Pradesh.
The trip takes about one day by jeep, and two days by bus, through the world’s highest
mountain passes.
Some passes reach 17,000 feet high or more.
Avalanches often block the road, and there are frequent patches of ice and heavy snowfalls.
Weather and road conditions change rapidly.
The road is extremely narrow in places, particularly on high, steep cliffs overlooking deep mountain
chasms.
Loose gravel breaks free from the road at random intervals due to the constant freezing
and thawing action.
The same freezing and thawing effects take their toll on what little pavement there is
on parts of the road, making the asphalt ripple like water.
The Ladakh region to the north is a semi-arid desert and is very cold, even in summer.
In addition to the rough road, one must be prepared for the severe conditions, both in
the desert and the mountains.
The radical climb in elevation, thousands of feet, results in lower air pressure at
the higher altitude.
Less oxygen is in the air and altitude sickness is common.
Despite being one of the least comfortable trips possible, many tourists still take the
trek for the spectacular scenery.
Number 8.
Kabul-Jalalabad Road Completed in 1969, the Kabul-Jalalabad road
began as a decent, two-lane asphalt highway.
Now in Taliban territory, fatalities occur literally on a daily basis.
But not because of terrorism.
The road has since decayed into a 90 mile pitted, gravel path.
It follows the Kabul River Gorge along cliffs almost 2000 feet high for 40 of those miles.
It is very heavily traveled and strategically important to the area for humanitarian aid
and local trade.
The road is one of twists, turns, and wheels hanging over the edge of cliffs.
The elevation changes over 4000 feet through Afghanistan’s famously rugged mountains.
So many people have been lost on the road that they have stopped any official count.
Automobiles flip over.
Trucks soar off the cliffside.
Buses hit each other head on, each refusing to yield.
The cars travel very fast.
The trucks, however, move quite slowly.
The difference causes dangerous conflict.
The trucks, lacking any practical regulatory oversight, are often severely overloaded.
They have difficulty climbing the steep mountain grades.
They get stuck.
They roll backward.
They fall over.
They fall off the cliff.
Car drivers become angry, impatient, and to begin to drive around the scene, to crash,
and to fall off the cliff themselves.
It is a horrible scene that repeats and repeats.
It seems non-sensical.
Yet, it exists.
Number 7.
Trans-Siberian Highway 6800 miles of highway, stretching across Russia
from the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Japan, the Trans-Siberian Highway is considered to be
the longest national highway in the world.
Australia disputes this title, claiming its Highway 1 as the longest.
We won’t weigh in on the matter.
What is certain is that the terrain of the Trans-Siberian Highway is some of the roughest
and most challenging on the planet.
Initially built by gulag inmates long ago, the quality of the road varies widely, depending
on geographic location and local climate conditions.
The road surface runs from almost perfect in the west to poor and even unmaintained
in the east.
Dry season provides excellent driving conditions, cold but accommodating.
Wet season can turn the highway into a soggy quagmire.
If you travel the distance from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, you will encounter environments
from tundra to forests, to vast plains of nothing.
While you can travel most of the Trans-Siberian Highway without incident, there are sections
which are quite isolated, haunting and dangerous.
There is also a high per-capita drunk driving rate in Russia, and the long, cold and fast
drive tempt some to imbibe to fight the boredom and tension of the difficult journey.
Never travel the Trans-Siberian Highway alone.
It has a reputation for being unkind to unwary travelers.
There are more than 26,500 annual road casulties in Russia, many on the Trans-Siberian Highway.
It’s the fifth most dangerous place for accidental motorist casulties in the world.
Number 6.
Sichuan-Tibet Highway From China’s Sichuan Province in the east
to Tibet in the west, the Sichuan-Tibet Highway crosses primeval forests, ancient rivers,
and 14 of the highest mountains in the world.
The number of road fatalities in China has doubled over the past 20 years, from 3.9 per
100,000 drivers to 7.6 per 100,000 drivers.
This staggering rate is accompanied by the statistic of 82,000 fatal accidents in 2006
alone.
At least some of those fatalities come from The Sichuan-Tibet Highway which is 1500 miles
of poor driving surfaces, hairpin mountain curves, single-car width lanes, steep cliffs,
and inclement weather.
Landslides, avalanches, falling rocks, dust, and shifting gravel make up just some of the
adventure of the journey.
At high altitudes, sometimes over 16,000 feet, oxygen is in short supply.
The oxygen supply at that elevation is only half that of sea level.
The high elevation, which can also cause high mountain sickness and nausea, rapidly descends
almost 4000 feet to a rickety bridge which has seen better days.
Number 5.
Cotopaxi Volcano Road, Ecuador Ecuador is the bad road capital of the world.
But the worst of the worst is the road leading to the Cotopaxi volcano.
There is a swiftly moving stream crossing the entrance to the Cotopaxi National Park,
right across the road.
Since 1738, the Cotopaxi volcano has erupted more than 50 times.
Your chances of getting there uncooked are good, but not perfect.
The volcanic activity has taken its toll on the surrounding area, especially the road.
The potholes are enormous — craters, actually.
Small streams well up into dangerous and fatal flash floods in an instant with only small
amounts of precipitation, sweeping away unwary travelers every year.
Steep inclines lead into deep valleys.
Treacherous, slippery, narrow roads make it easy to slide off into those valleys. 25 miles
of pit-riddled dirt roads, soaked in local streams, flooded out by the slightest rain,
threatened by the local volcano, and you have one of the most dangerous roads in the world.
Number 4.
Skippers Canyon Road Skippers Canyon Road in New Zealand’s South
Island is so dangerous that rental car insurance is not honored if you drive on it.
Skippers Canyon Road is so dangerous that you need a permit just to drive on it in the
first place.
The road was blasted out of the face of a sheer cliff by gold miners and Chinese laborers
using only black powder and hand drills.
The rock they blasted was solid schist and hasn’t changed much since they finished
construction.
That was 22 years after they began in 1893 after they discovered gold in Skippers Canyon.
Good luck to you if you are driving and find someone coming the other way.
To one side you have looming cliff walls, to the other, sheer cliff drop-offs.
Clinging to the cliff walls is all you can do to survive this slender thread of a thoroughfare.
Otherwise, you have a fall of thousands of feet down.
The local dirt comprising the road surface is so soft that it soon turns to dust in dry
weather and to mud in the rain.
Yet, this road has been in constant use since its completion, when gold rush fever hit.
Number 3.
The Way To Fairy Meadows Such a pleasant name, such a treacherous road.
Pakistan’s high mountain passes are nearly impassable.
So is this road.
In Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region, the roughly 10-mile track is an unmaintained gravel
pathway without guardrails.
You cannot take a vehicle to the very end, as the track narrows to the point of biking
or walking traffic.
In fact, for most of its distance, the road is only as wide as the average Jeep Wrangler.
Careless drivers lose their lives in the high mountain pass by falling off the side of cliffs
at an elevation of 10,800 feet.
The road was built by local ethnic villagers hundreds of years ago and literally has not
seen repair since.
You are traveling a local road, so there are local tolls to pay.
There is a surprising amount of traffic on this road, as it leads to the path to Pakistan’s
second highest summit, Nanga Parbat, which is second only to K2 in height.
The dangerous road is popular with hikers and mountain climbers.
In 2013, the World Health Organization ranked The Way To Fairy Meadows as the second deadliest
road in the world and gave it a “fear factor” of 9 out of 10.
The reasons given were “treacherous high altitude, unstable and narrow mountain roads.”
Other factors included the lack of barriers, local driving techniques, road surfaces, and
the condition of the vehicles, and weather conditions.
Number 2.
Bolivia’s Death Road Built by Paraguayan prisoners during the Chaco
War in the 1930s, the North Yungas Road in Bolivia leads northeast 35 miles from La Paz
to Coroico.
This infamous road is among the few that connect the isolated Yungas region in the north, to
Bolivia’s capital in the south.
Traveling north from La Paz, the mountainous single-lane trek climbs over 15,250 feet up
to the crisp, dry Altiplano plateau.
Then it rapidly descends over 11,000 feet, down the dangerously steep mountainside and
over the crests of 2,000-foot cliffs, down to the Yungas rainforest below and the town
of Coroico.
If you travel during the wet season, fog and rain interfere with visibility and turn the
10-foot wide road into a muddy pit.
The dry season causes rockfalls, dust, and crumbling road edges.
A 2006 estimate said that 200-300 people are killed every year traveling on this road.
Crosses mark the spots where many have passed.
In 2013 the World Health Organization’s Global Status Report on Road Safety ranked
North Yungas Road as the World’s Most Dangerous Road.
The WHO also gave it a “fear factor” of 10 out of 10.
Number 1.
Mexico’s Highway 101 177 bodies were found near San Fernando, Mexico.
The rumors were that dangerous men on the road were taking passengers off buses and
killing them.
“No one wants to drive the road,” said Ester Arce’s husband.
Ester and her husband were at a gas station on Highway 101, usually the most heavily traveled
highway in the state of Tamaulipas.
But times were different now.
Highway 101 runs the length of the Mexican State of Tamaulipas.
It keeps going south into Central Mexico, and also extends north through Matamoros,
across the Rio Grande, and into the United States.
Ester and her husband have traveled down from Atlanta.
“My friends thought I was crazy to come down,” said Ester.
The authorities discovered 32 more corpses down by Highway 101.
Even television trucks and journalists won’t take to the highway to report on the largest
mass grave found in Mexico’s four-year drug battle.
Central and South American migrants, 72 of them, were murdered in this area previously
by the cartel.
Recently, 68 people were found and rescued from a stash house in Reynosa.
They had, indeed, been snatched off buses on Highway 101 and taken hostage.
Past frequent drivers of Highway 101 now refuse to use it.
The US Government has warned its citizens not to drive the road.
Now, those wanting to use the road travel in caravans, during the daytime, and move
at high speeds, stopping for nothing.