The Duku Highway

The Duku Highway stretches from Dushanzi in northern Xinjiang to Kuqa in the south, carving a 550-kilometre path through the Tianshan Mountains. Construction began in 1974 and took roughly a decade to complete, opening in the early 1980s. It was built under harsh conditions, with tens of thousands of workers, many from the People’s Liberation Army, cutting roads through steep cliffs, snowfields, and rock. The project claimed 168 lives, a testament to the difficulty of building a modern road in such unforgiving terrain. It is a segment of G217, stretching from Altay in the North to Hotan in the South.