A Complete Travel Guide About Hazara Motorway

Hazara Motorway is an excellent alternative for those traveling to northern areas of Pakistan, for instance, Hunza Valley. A much better alternative is still the Naran-Babusar road which is only open for three to four months (June to September) due to extreme weather conditions. Hence this motorway will be the best option in the remaining eight months.

The previously busy Karakoram Highway (KKH) was a road with high traffic running through different towns and valleys mentioned below. The Hazara motorway easily saves above three hours in comparison to the Karakoram Highway up to Thakot.

Hazara Motorway (also known as M-15 Motorway) is a 180 kilometres motorway linking the Burhan Interchange near Hasan Abdal in Punjab to Thakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. It by-passes five major town/cities including Hassanabdal, Haripur, Havelian, Abbottabad, and Mansehra. However interchanges are available to enter/exit towns up to Mansehra. After Mansehra, the motorway passes through the towns of Shinkiari, and Battagram.

The motorway has six tunnels two at Abbottabad and one each at Battal, Karmong, Mansehra and Thakot. Up to Mansehra, its 39 km portion is six-lane controlled access portion while the remaining 79 km is four lane road. The road after Mansehra is a single road with two lanes. This two way road ideally should not have been classified as a “motorway”. The motorways are usually dual carriage, each with at least two lanes (total 4 lanes).