Salang Pass

The Salang is the road that holds Afghanistan together, a Soviet-built tunnel of two and two-thirds kilometres driven under the Hindu Kush at three thousand four hundred metres and opened in 1964. It is the only year-round motor crossing of the range in practical use, so most traffic between Kabul and the north goes through it, and heavy snow shuts it for days at a time. Concrete avalanche galleries run down both approaches. A fire in a convoy inside the tunnel in 1982 killed a number nobody has ever fixed. The drive up is the point. Kabul is about a hundred and twenty kilometres south by road from the tunnel mouth.