Burma Road

Its terminals were Lashio, Burma, in the south and Kunming, China, the capital of Yunnan province in the north.

Preventing the flow of supplies on the road helped motivate the occupation of Burma by the Empire of Japan in 1942 during World War II.

Supplies from San Francisco for example would land at Rangoon (now Yangon), moved by rail to Lashio where the road started in Burma, up steep gradients before crossing into China over the Wanding bridge.

The Chinese stretch of the road continued for some five hundred miles through rural Yunnan terrain before ending up in Kunming.

The Allies thereafter supplied China by air, flying "over The Hump" from India, which initially proved fatally dangerous and woefully inadequate, leading U.S. army general Joseph Stilwell to obsessively pursue the goal of reopening the Burma Road.

Transportation of Allied Forces in Burma and southwestern China including the Burma Road
The "Twenty-Four Bends" (25.821725°N, 105.202600°E), often mistaken for a segment of the Burma Road, is actually in Qinglong County , Guizhou Province . During the Second Sino-Japanese War , Western supplies carried over the Burma Road first arrived at Kunming , the capital of Yunnan province, then traveled over mountain roads, such as the "24 Bends," passing through cities such as Guiyang , the capital of Guizhou province, before continuing to Chongqing .
Burmese and Chinese laborers using hand tools to reopen the Burma Road in 1944