The China - Pakistan "Friendship Highway Through Paradise"
Silk Route - a fairy tale like travelers' dream route from Central Asia to the rest of the world. It existed as trade link between the East and the West around 100 BC and lasted until the 15th Century, when with the invention of ships, the trade became more cheaper and easier than the rugged mountains through which the Silk Route passed. Since mostly the traders from the West imported the Chinese silk, the route became to be known as the Silk Route. Besides trade, the route was also used by the explorers, invaders, missionaries and philosophers.. Buddhism, Islam and Christianity mainly came to this region through this trade linking route. The Zero Point of the route started from Xian in China through the great Gobi Desert to Dunhuang, where it bifurcated via Taklamakan Desert to Kashgar and through Yarkand to Kashgar. It is from Kashgar that it entered the subcontinent over the Pamirs and the Karakoram Mountains. China and Pakistan became long time strategic friends when President Ayub Khan of Pakistan visited China in 1964 and soon both great countries realized that a north - south link from China to the Arabian Sea can become a reality with the revival of the old Silk Route. Thus in 1966, Pakistan and China agreed to construct the KKH - the Karakoram Highway. The KKH has opened up remote villages where little has changed in hundreds of years, where farmers irrigate tiny terraces to grow small patches of wheat, barely or maize that stand out like emeralds against the grey, stony mountains. One of the workers narrates an interesting anecdote about the remoteness of the area. When after lot of difficulties, a Pakistan Army jeep managed to reach a so far inaccessible village, a villager ran and brought a vase full of water and placed under the front of the jeep. When asked what he was doing, the villager innocently replied, "Sahib, your animal must be thirsty."
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