[1] However, the route does not carry as much traffic as many of the other regional arterial roads and between the main cities it serves, Lusaka and Chipata, it passes through rural and wilderness areas.

[2][3] Chipata, the capital of the Eastern Province was an early outpost of the British colonial administration as Fort Jameson when Zambia was Northern Rhodesia.

Like most of the Eastern Province, it had much easier access to Malawi, then the British protectorate of Nyasaland, and to the Mozambique ports of Quelimane and Beira than to the rest of Northern Rhodesia, and so most trade and communication in early colonial days was eastwards.

Until the mid-1920s mail, goods and passengers went between the capital of the territory at Livingstone and Fort Jameson by train through neighbouring countries — via Bulawayo and Beira to Blantyre and then by road.

[5] The Eastern Province is a narrow slice of land sandwiched between Mozambique and Malawi to its south and east, and the Luangwa Valley, world-famous for its wildlife, to the north-west, which no highways cross.

Apart from a bush track over the highlands in the far north of the province, a narrow neck of land in the west became the only way in from or out to the rest of Zambia, and as the only highway to cross it, the Great East road is strategically vulnerable.

[1] This neck is cut by the lower Luangwa River making a turn due south to the Zambezi, in a narrow and deep valley with steep slopes and thick vegetation, amounting in some sections to a gorge.

On the eastern side, once the road had climbed up the difficult terrain onto the Luangwa-Zambezi watershed at Nyimba, Petauke, and Katete, the going is easier.

As a result of Zambia's political support for the anti-apartheid and independence sides in these conflicts, armed incursions cut the road at the Luangwa Bridge, with it being rebuilt and reopened in 1968.

The T6 road is 55 km in length from Katete, passing through Chilembwe and Mlolo (through the western side of Chadiza District), to the Chanida Border with Mozambique.

[3] At this junction, the M12 makes a right turn and goes northwards for 173 kilometres, following the Malawi borderline, through the Chipangali and Lumezi Districts, to reach its northern terminus in the vicinity of the town of Lundazi, where it ends at another junction with the D104 road coming from the South Luangwa National Park and the Luambe National Park in the west.