What is the Longest Road in the World?
According to the book of records, the Pan-American Highway is the longest road in the world, stretching nearly 30,000 kilometers from Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina.
However, depending on who you ask, several people might dispute this claim.
The vision of the Pan-American Highway was first put forward by the United States in 1923. Although touted as a fraternal and idealistic initiative to connect distant countries, some argue that it was essentially a maneuver to boost sales of US-made cars and other exports to Latin America.
In 1924, US officials invited 37 delegates from Latin America to Washington DC to hear their sales pitch and after years of wrangling, an agreement was reached. The Pan-American Highway Convention was signed in 1937 by Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Panama, Peru and the United States.
Yet progress was not swift. In the early 1970s, President Nixon boasted that the mega-highway across the continent would soon be completed, but many gaps and dead ends still existed.
In fact, even today the Pan-American Highway is not fully interconnected and you cannot drive along its entire length. The Darién Gap, a thin 160-kilometer stretch of land connecting Panama to Colombia, is a conspicuous break in the road.
Covered by dense jungle and seasonal rains, no road passes through the Darién Gap, not even a dirt road.
In the 1970s, an attempt was made to build the Pan-American Highway through this gap, which the US had committed to fund in large part, but it was strongly opposed by environmentalists who argued that it would be disastrous for the region's biodiversity and indigenous communities.
On top of that, it is an extremely dangerous place to cross, frequented by armed militias, dangerous gangs and drug traffickers.
Despite this gap, the Pan-American Highway still holds the Guinness World Record for the "longest motorized road".
A worthy rival for this title is the Asian Highway 1 (AH1), the longest route of the Asian Highway Network, which stretches 20,557 km from Tokyo, Japan, to the Turkish-Bulgarian border, crossing Korea, China, Southeast Asia, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Iran.
However, once again, you will probably realize that this is not permanent either. Crossing the more than 942 kilometers of sea separating Japan and South Korea, as well as the Demilitarized Zone separating South Korea and North Korea, is not possible for most civilians.
Australia's Highway 1 is arguably the longest fully drivable road and the longest national road, encircling the outer edge of the entire island for some 14,500 kilometers. It holds the Guinness World Record for the "longest continuous road". A group of men called the "Highway 1 to Hell" team set the record for completing this route a few years ago, circumnavigating the whole of Australia in 5 days, 13 hours and 43 minutes.
In other words, the answer to the question "What is the World's Longest Road?" probably depends on who you ask and how much they can forgive the huge gaps in the supposedly uninterrupted roads.
Thanks for reading.