The Mêdog Highway, Motuo Highway (Chinese: 墨脱公路), or Mêdog Highway, Zhamo Highway (Chinese: 扎墨公路), connecting Tramog, Bomi County to Medog County in Tibet Autonomous Region, is a 117-kilometer engineering marvel traversing six active fault zones in the eastern Himalayas.^[1][2]

Completed in October 2013 after 52 years of intermittent construction, it ended Mêdog's status as China's last roadless county.^[3][4] The route goes through the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon. To keep the environment from being too upset, creative solutions were needed, such as elevated bridges and rerouting parts of the route to protect important habitats for endangered species like the snow leopard and Asian golden cat.^[5]

Construction faced extreme challenges: workers battled frequent landslides, avalanches, and annual rainfall exceeding 3,000 mm. A key breakthrough was the 3.3-kilometer Galongla Tunnel in 2010, which bypassed permafrost and avalanche-prone slopes at 3,700 meters. The highway incorporates 29 bridges and 227 culverts to stabilize terrain, with 80% of the Medog section built as 4.5-meter-wide reinforced concrete roads to withstand seismic activity.^[6]

Ecological safeguards included strict waste management and bans on quarrying near biodiversity hotspots. Post-2013 upgrades extended annual operability from 8 to 11 months, while the 2021 Paimo Highway expansion (part of China National Highway 219) reduced travel time from Lhasa to Mêdog from 12 to 4 hours. The highway supports Mêdog's tea plantations and eco-tourism while maintaining protocols to limit vehicle emissions in the fragile alpine ecosystem.^[7][8]