Road to Death - Crazy Routes

Crazy Routes in Andes, Albania & New Zealand

Necessity may
dictate that you choose the "road less traveled", but for goodness
sake, leave weaker-nerved passengers behind. They might experience
life-changing (and underwear-changing) circumstances that they will
never forget, or forgive. One of the Chinese military roads to "boost
the morale of their troops"



And here is how they navigate it:





Tirana to Elbasan Road in Albania
This
is a hairy route, very high, badly maintained with high volume of heavy
truck traffic - count on these Albanian drivers to be dare-devils, too.
Whatever pictures we could get, look pretty serious: The cool thing
about this road is that it leads to various interesting "rabbit trails"
with ancient ruins at the end:





The Skippers Canyon Road near Queenstown:

Katie Laurence writes to us:
"This
road is made from a very narrow cut in the middle of a sheer cliff
face. The large tourist buses go along it, and it's so narrow that if
two vehicles have to pass each other, one vehicle might have to reverse
for anything up to 3 kilometres of winding narrow road to get to a
place wide enough to pass. It is the SCARIEST road you could imagine..."





And this is how it looks close up, with sheer drops just outside the single lane (with almost not enough space for tires) -



Stelvio Pass Road - redefining switchbacks - A Scenic yet Dangerous Road!
Height - 2757 meters
Location
- in the Italian Alps, near Bormio and Sulden, 75 km from Bolzano,
close to Swiss border. (The road connects the Valtellina with the upper
Adige valley and Merano)
Claim to fame - "the highest paved mountain pass in the Eastern Alps, and the second highest in the Alps, after the Col de l'Iseran (2770 m)"



The Pulpit Rock Hike - if you fall, it's 1000 meters down

This
place is indeed so spectacular, that we are going to write a special
post about it. For now, just to give you a taste of some scenery - a
few shots of people definitely having fun (not forgetting
thousand-meter drops at every turn)