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FROM EASTERN RUSSIA’S ‘Road of Bones’ where a flat tyre could mean freezing to death, to the breathtaking but treacherous Atlantic Road in Norway, these road trips are not for the faint of heart.
We scoured the internet for the most frightening roads around the world, made dangerous by hairpin turns, crashing waves, bandits hidden just around the bend, and more.
These 11 will have you gripping your seat-belt for dear life…
Alaska’s nightmarish Dalton Highway stretches some 400 miles through remote forests, tundras, and over the Yukon River. It concludes at the Arctic Ocean.
The 108-mile Prithvi Highway offers breathtaking views of the Himalayas and some of Nepal’s biggest religious sites — but not without risk. The heavily congested, paved road is prone to landslides, traffic jams, and flooding.
This is Norway’s Atlantic Road – which can be treacherous in bad weather, as breaking waves sweep over the barrier.
Within 100 miles of the coldest inhabited place on earth, eastern Russia’s Kolyma Highway offers little refuge. Bears attack stranded drivers in broad daylight.
Kolyma Highway goes by another name, the Road of Bones. Tens of thousands of gulag prisoners died constructing it, and their bones are buried beneath.
The well-beaten Ho Chi Minh Trail, which winds through mountains and rice fields in Vietnam and Laos, served as a Communist supply route during the Vietnam war. Aerial raids during the war left the muddy road littered with unexploded bombs.
Stelvio Pass, which once formed the boundary between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, snakes 9,000 feet uphill into the Alpine mountain range.
Local folklore says Colorado’s Million Dollar Highway got its name because an early traveller said you’d have to pay him a million dollars to drive it again. The stretch of US Route 550 traverses three 10,000-foot mountains passes, and features jaw-dropping cliffs, tight lanes, and hairpin curves.
Tired of taking the long way around to town, a small group of villagers carved the Guoliang Tunnel into China’s Taihang Mountains more than 40 years ago.
It took five years for the 13 villagers to complete the nearly 4,000-foot tunnel, which is just wide enough to be driven along. Thirty hand-carved windows give daring drivers a peak at the drop just outside.
Google search Luxor-al-Hurghada Road in Egypt and one of the first results you’ll see reads, “Is it safe for tourists?” Treacherous terrain is not the main concern here… The road, which provides a straight shot from the Red Sea to the city of Luxor, is a popular hangout for bandits and terrorists. They supposedly prey on unsuspecting motorists at night.
The highest motorway in the world, the Karakoram Highway, emerged as a joint construction project between China and Pakistan in the ’60s. The heavily dusted desert road reaches almost 3 miles high at its peak. Close to 900 construction workers died while constructing the so-called eighth world wonder, killed during blasts or by falling into a gorge.
The Philippines’ Commonwealth Avenue is home to three to five accidents daily, earning it the nickname ‘Killer Highway’. Sensing a theme?
- Melia Robinson for Business Insider
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