World’s most terrifying roads: Drivers inch along crumbling tracks in stomach-churning footage

It’s the kind of footage that makes you cower in your chair, preparing yourself for the worst.

The view is of a winding, crumbling road ahead and sheer 2,000 foot drops on either side.

Does this sound like your worst nightmare? Well, for many drivers this has been the reality, and they have somehow defied the forces of nature and survived the world’s most treacherous roads.

Stomach-turning footage shows daring drivers and motorcyclists inching their way through narrow mountain passes, with no walls to protect them if they make a single mistake.

Here MailOnline takes a look at images of motorists driving the world’s scariest roads, and somehow cheating death.

Porcelain

Nail-biting footage shows a truck teetering off the edge of a 330-foot cliff in China after the driver skipped a corner on the narrow mountain road.

The driver had been following his sat nav down the narrow road, a sharp drop to the right and the steep mountainside to the left, when he veered off the road while trying to turn the truck.

The driver and a passenger, by a stroke of luck, managed to flee the truck as it hung precariously from the edge of the cliff near the city of Changzhi in January 2022.

Shocking drone footage shows the truck tipped precariously over its edge, while another video shows workers recovering the wrecked vehicle.

The driver had tried to go back up the road as the track was getting steeper and narrower by the minute.

He started to back the truck, passing between the rock face on one side and a steep cliff on the other, but one of the truck’s wheels skidded off the road, leaving the vehicle dangling over the edge of the cliff.

Nepal

The footage, not for the faint of heart, shows a group of British tourists navigating a narrow mountain road with a 600 meter drop on one side.

The video shows the group in the Manaslu mountainous region of Nepal as they approach a large ledge on the rocky track.

While filming the approach, the cameraman makes a running commentary on the area, describing the route as “the craziest road I’ve ever been on in my life.”

During the stressful journey, a passenger was forced to exit the vehicle, narrowly avoiding a vertical plunge into a river, and continue on to “explore the route.”

The cameraman can be heard saying: What do you think of that drop? Oh Lord.

‘Oh shit. So now we’ve gotten to a stage where the roof rack is going to get stuck under the overhang, so Rincou had to go ahead and measure the height so we can get through with a pickup.

It’s the narrowest stretch of road we’ve ever been through. The fall into the river is [an] estimated 2,000 feet.’

India

The video shows a nearby motorcyclist being thrown over the edge of a steep mountain in India as he tried to pass a truck.

The motorcyclist lost control of his bike while riding through the narrow and muddy sections of the Zojila pass in the Himalayas.

The driver, who was following a truck carrying iron pipes, had swerved to the right side of the road – inches from the drop – to see if he could pass the truck.

But the motorcyclist lost control as he got dangerously close to the truck in front and skidded down the muddy road toward the edge of the mountain.

In a stroke of luck, the cyclist, who nearly fell off his bike and fell over the edge of the cliff to his death, managed to regain control at the last second.

Providing a vital road link between the Kashmir Valley and Ladakh, the Zojila Pass is considered one of the most dangerous mountain roads in the world.

Peru

Chilling footage shows a driver inching down a narrow, dilapidated road, with a plummeting plunge down Peru’s Cotahausi Canyon below.

A passenger in the van films the treacherous journey through the 11,000-foot-deep canyon, which is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon.

The video shows the truck inching down the dilapidated, unpaved road, its window looking out over a steep drop into the bottom of the canyon.

There are no walls to protect the driver and passengers from certain death if they make a single mistake.

But by a stroke of luck, the driver manages to make his way through the winding road, which features hairpin turns and stomach-turning drops.

France

Incredible footage shows a truck carrying huge logs making its way through the winding roads of the French Alps.

The driver can be seen driving the log truck down the narrow road, a steep drop to the left and the steep mountainside to the right, with the heavy load of felled trees.

The video shows the driver slowly turning a corner, the front of the truck facing the drop below.

The driver deftly navigates his way around the corner, only to find himself on a narrow, crumbling road that is barely as wide as the truck.

At one point, the driver has to get closer to the drop off to avoid a large jutting rock.

The footage was shot on narrow roads near Roche-de-Rame, a commune in the French Alps, in southeastern France.

Pakistan

The video shows a group of tourists driving a jeep through one of the most dangerous roads in the world in Pakistan.

The footage shows the driver driving down the narrow, unpaved Fairy Meadow Road from Raikot to the village of Tattu, with steep drops on either side.

The video shows how parts of the path have collapsed down the steep side of the mountain.

The footage shows the plummet down the side of the mountain, with no walls to protect drivers from veering off course and falling to their deaths.

Fairy Meadow Road was ranked the second deadliest road in the world in 2013.

This is because it is a ‘narrow, unstable, and treacherous high-altitude mountain road’.