Karakoram Highway the lake by small vessels, to be reloaded onto trucks at the other end. In July 2012 Pakistan began constructing a revised route around the lake at a higher elevation with five new tunnels, with total length of 7.12 km, and two new bridges. The work was contracted out to the China Road & Bridge Corporation (CRBC) and was completed in September 2015—see Karakorum Highway Realignment (China-Pakistan Friendship Tunnels) below. At in length, the Pakistani section of the highway starts at Abbottabad, although the N-35 of which KKH is now part, officially starts from Hasan Abdal. The highway meets the
Karakoram Highway in the Xinjiang region of China, to Abbottabad, of Pakistan. An extension of the highway southwest from Abbottabad, in the form of the N-35 highway, meets the Grand Trunk Road, N-5, at Hasan Abdal, Pakistan. The highway cuts through the between the Eurasian and Indian plates, where China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan come within of each other. Owing largely to the extremely sensitive state of the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, the Karakoram Highway has strategic and military importance to these nations, but particularly Pakistan and China. On 30 June 2006, a memorandum of understanding was signed between the