Open only during summer and early autumn, the Duku highway has one of the most scenic landscapes I have seen in northern Xinjiang. The road from the south begins with dry and rocky mountain faces then changes to beautiful pine forests and alpine lakes. Eventually, the forests disappear and you will drive pass endless rolling green grasslands. Here are some must-see places along the Duku highway.
Basic Fact
Duku Highway is the road, connecting two cities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, from both the south and north sides of Tianshan. These cities are Dushanzi in the north and Kuqa in the south. From the first characters of their names- Du and Ku, comes the name of this road. Officially, it is numbered as G217, but due to the fantastic landscapes that this road passes, it is popular as “Duku Highway” and this name has become iconic for travelers. There are monument stones on both ends of the road, where you can often see tourist people taking photos and selfies.
Duku Highway Length
The whole length of the Duku Highway is 526 km (I have measured it by GPS) and can be traveled by car without a stop for about 8 hours and a half (of course, if it is hypothetically empty). Officially, in many sources, you can see a length of 561 km, but it seems like it is old information, from the time before building the tunnels under the three passes. At that time the “original road” has reached the passes with additional curves that contributed to the length. Now the tunnels cut the length and the old sections of the road on the passes are abandoned (but probably still can be used by bikers, which is much better than crossing the dangerous narrow tunnels with a lot of traffic).
Some Geography
Duku Highway crosses the two main subranges of Tianshan- Narat and Borohoro passing through three mountain passes, reaching maximal altitude 3460 m in the northern Haxilegen Pass (although the road crosses all the three passes through tunnels) and two main river valleys between them. Along your whole trip on the Duku Highway, you constantly pass through and watch vast grasslands, deep gorges, splendid forests, snowy mountains, and local nomadic culture. No wonder that the road is “declared” as a”heavenly road”!
