ISLAMABAD: The tech giant Google has commemorated Pakistan’s Independence Day with a doodle artwork of an iconic landmark, Khojak Tunnel, located in Balochistan’s Qilla Abdullah district.
It illustrated the fortified eastern entrance of Pakistan’s historic Khojak Tunnel, also known as Shela Bagh Tunnel, one of the nation’s oldest and longest underpasses. Its construction had begun in 1888 to extend the area’s railway through the Khojak pass of the Toba Kakar mountain range, which was at the time impossible to cross by train.
The Khojak Tunnel’s construction was an unprecedented undertaking in the South Asian subcontinent. Over 19 million bricks were required, most of which were kilned at the rugged site, and builders burned more than 6,000 candles to illuminate their work in the dark space. Upon its completion in 1891, the 3.9-kilometer Khojak Tunnel became the fourth-longest underpass in the world.
To honor this feat of civil engineering, in 1976 the Pakistani government printed a depiction of the Khojak Tunnel on its five-rupee note, which remained in circulation until 2005, the Google said in a statement in connection with Pakistan’s Independence Day in celebration of the date in 1947 when it became an autonomous republic.
