Panlong Ancient Road Scenic Drive 盘龙古道正规公路游览

About Panlong Ancient Road Scenic Drive

The China Daily item places the road in Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County and gives it a total length of 75 km, of which a 36 km stretch carries more than 600 S-shaped and U-shaped bends. It records the road as running through the Kunlun Mountains with snow peaks and ravines along the way, and gives the elevation as climbing from 3,000 m to a high point of 4,216 m, a drop of 1,200 m; some bends, it records, have a turning radius of about 10 m and gradients above 10 per cent. The same item records that the road began as a track for local herders and was surfaced with asphalt in 2019, and that in 2024 more than 160,000 vehicles passed along it and it received nearly 500,000 visitors.

The Xinjiang Daily item records that the road, which it also calls the Waqia highway, is the road connecting Waqia township with the outside, at an elevation above 4,100 m with a maximum drop of more than 1,000 m, and that local people call it the high-plateau sky road. It records a visitor's count of 608 bends, and that the road divides into a large and a small Panlong section with parking areas provided along it. It records that the road began as one section of the county town-to-Waqia road and was built along the ridge because the mountain is sandy rock too loose for tunnelling or viaducts, and that it formally opened to traffic in July 2019.

The two items give the road different total lengths — 75 km in the China Daily item and 36 km in the Xinjiang Daily item — and this record attributes each figure rather than reconciling them. The catalogue files the place under landforms and caves, while both pages describe a road rather than a landform, and the catalogue name also joins the road to a phrase about touring it by road; no cited page uses that compound label. Neither page gives the road a boundary, opening arrangements or a managing body, and neither states which parts of it are open.

What to look for

• The 36 km stretch that the China Daily item records as carrying more than 600 S-shaped and U-shaped bends
• The high point at 4,216 m that the China Daily item gives as the top of the climb from 3,000 m
• The two sections the Xinjiang Daily item distinguishes, a large and a small Panlong, and the parking areas it records along the road
• The signboard the Xinjiang Daily item records at the foot of the small Panlong section, carrying the line 今日走过了所有的弯路 从此人生尽是坦途
• The guesthouse at Er village in Waqia township that the China Daily item records as run by an inheritor of the Tajik eagle dance

Location & getting there

Getting to Panlong Ancient Road Scenic Drive

Use an authorised visitor route. Cave sections, geological sites and access roads can close independently, so confirm the area that your ticket covers.

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