I’ve wondered about this for a while - why does Afghanistan have that long narrow strip of territory that runs north-east between Pakistan and Tajikistan, and connects to China? Most countries tend to be a bit more compact, because a strip of territory like that is normally hard to defend. Is it based on a road through mountain passes or something?
Wakhan Corridor:
according to wikipedia created during “The Great Game” as a buffer between British India and Russian Central Asia
It seems to be called the Wakhan corridor, and it looks like a pretty desolate place.
From what I googled it looks like it has just been that way for a long time due to an agreement between the British and Russia.
Namibia has something similar – the Caprivi Strip. It was created when Germany and England were carving up Africa. The Germans wanted some of their territory to be on the Zambesi River, to use it as a way to ship to the east coast of Africa.
A good plan, except for the fact that Victoria Falls was in the way.
I came across these pics (linked to in Google Earth) and they definitely show the ‘ruggedness’ 
I had never noticed that part on a map, and do appreciate it being pointed out specifically. Easy to understand why its called a ‘corridor’.
More specifically it was created so that the borders of the British Empire in India / Pakistan would not directly touch the borders of the Russian Empire in central asia anywhere at all. There was always some buffer space in between.
Peter Hopkirk’s book “The Great Game” is a great read about this period of history:
thanks for the info, everyone - very interesting.
I am told that there is a ppoint east of Kasane (the easternmost town in Namibia) where it is possible to view the entire length of the Namibia-Zimbabwe border, plus of course the points at which that border intersects the Zambia-Namibia, Zambia-Zimbabwe, Botwana-Namibia, and Botswana-Zimbabwe borders – if not the only, one of the very few places where one can observe the entire length of a non-single-point international boundary from a single point on Earth. (I would assume that length and terrain alike make that impossible for the Afghan-Chinese border.)
Or (the) Gambia, which seems to exist to deny Senegal the river.
As opposed to the rest of Afghanistan? 
I flew right across Afghanistan on a clear day last May, on my way back to London from India, and was glued to the window of the plane the whole time. Pretty much the entire country I flew over looks like that photograph. It really hammered home why the place is so ungovernable.
There is a similar corridor in the Balkans.This divides Croatia, allowing Bosnia access to the coast. Map
That’s the exact reason it does exist. In 1783, as part of the peace treaty that ended the American Revolution, France gave Britain the Gambia River.
The British purchased exclusive trading rights along the Gambia river in the 16th century (from Portugal), while France claimed the surrounding area. They established the current boundaries in the late 19th century after much wrangling between them. Senegal and Gambia attempted to form the “Senegambia Confederation” in the 1980s, but it fell apart, and they remain separate entities.
I’m always amazed (probably shouldn’t be) when I see a GQ thread about some obscure question I had been wondering about for awhile. Nice to finally know!
If you’re looking for weirs map stuff, look no further than the USofA.
There’s the Northwest Angle, the tiny chunk of Minnesota on Lake of teh Woods above the 49th parallel; to get to this chunk of the USA, you have to go by boat or drive through Canada.
Or on boundary bay, at the other extreme of the mainland, there’s a peninsula that sticks south of the 49th parallel and a chunk of America about 2 miles square south of Vancouver where again, you need to drive through Canada to get to it.
As for seeing entire borders; depends whether you define moving around in circles; you can see the entire border of Vatican City from the top of St. Peter’s dome, but you have to walk around. I wonder if there’s a similar point in San Marino? The Monaco-France border is about 2 miles long, there must be a high point you can see it all from?
there’s a tiny strwech of border between the Kazakh enclave and Turkey that’s about 5 miles long and appears to follow the ridgeline - I wonder if you could see that from one point? Or the whole of the little Armenian enclave (about 2 miles across?) in Kazakhistan and vice versa? Not sure what the end result of the wars was, if those bits still exist… Similarly, the border between Montenegro and Croatia seems to be about 10 miles long, and possibly you can find a strategic mountaintop to see it all?
The frontier between North Korea and Russia appears to be about 15 mils long, and it looks like there’s a peak or two on the Korean side where you could probably see the whole thing before you got arrested and sent to a prison camp.
The moral of the story is, don’t turn politicians loose with crayons and a map.