Wakhjir Pass

The Wakhjir Pass, also spelled Vakhjir Pass, is a mountain pass in the Hindu Kush or Pamirs at the eastern end of the Wakhan Corridor, the only potentially navigable pass between Afghanistan and China in the modern era. It links Wakhan in Afghanistan with the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County in Xinjiang, China, at an altitude of 4923 m. The pass is not an official border crossing point. With a difference of 3.5 hours, the Afghanistan–China border has the sharpest official change of clocks of any international frontier (UTC+4:30 in Afghanistan to UTC+8, in China). China refers to the pass as South Wakhjir Pass, as there is a northern pass on the Chinese side.

Overview


There is no road across the pass. On the Chinese side, the immediate region is only accessible to military personnel. A 92 km- long barbed wire fence was erected on the border, and there is a Chinese border guard outpost at Keketuluke just 20 km east of the pass. In the summer of 2009, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense began construction of a new road to within 10 km of the border for use by border guards. The road leads through the Taghdumbash Pamir to the Karakoram Highway 80 km away. The valley to the east of Wakhjir Pass on the Chinese side is the Chalachigu Valley. It is entirely closed to visitors; however, local residents and herders from the area are permitted access. The Chinese refer to it as the portion of Wakhan Corridor in China.

On the Afghan side, the nearest road is a rough road to Sarhad-e Wakhan (also known as Sarhad-e Broghil), about 100 km from the pass by paths. Just below the pass on the Afghan side is an ice cave, at an altitude of 4554 m. This is the source of the Wakhjir River, which ultimately flows to the Amu Darya (Oxus). The cave is therefore claimed as a source of the Amu Darya. Dilisang Pass, to Pakistan, is in the same valley about 20 km away.

History
Traditionally, the pass is inaccessible for at least five months out of the year and is accessible irregularly for the remainder of the year. The terrain is extremely difficult, although Aurel Stein reported that the immediate approaches to the pass were "remarkably easy". There are few records of successful crossings by foreigners. Historically, the pass was a trading route between Badakhshan and Yarkand used by merchants from Bajaor. Wakhjir Pass is part of the Silk Road. It is believed that the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang traveled via this pass on his return trip to China in approximately 649 AD. Marco Polo purportedly crossed the pass when he traveled through the Pamirs, although he did not mention the pass by name. The Jesuit priest Benedict Goëz crossed from the Wakhan to China between 1602 and 1606. The next oldest accounts are from the period of the Great Game in the late 19th century. In 1868, a pundit known as the Mirza, working for the Great Trigonometric Survey of India, crossed the pass. There were further crossings in 1874 by Captain T.E. Gordon of the British Army, in 1891 by Francis Younghusband, and in 1894 by Lord Curzon. In May 1906, Sir Aurel Stein crossed the pass and reported that at that time, the pass was used by only 100 pony loads of goods each way annually. Since then, the only Westerner to have crossed the pass seems to have been H.W. Tilman in 1947.

In 1895 the pass was established as the border between China and Afghanistan in an agreement between the British and the Russians, although the Chinese and Afghans did not finally agree on the border until 1963.

It is believed that in more recent times, the pass is sometimes used as a low-intensity drug smuggling route, and is used to transport opium made in Afghanistan to China. Afghanistan has asked China on several occasions to open the border in the Wakhan Corridor for economic reasons or as an alternative supply route for fighting the Taliban insurgency. However, China has resisted, largely due to unrest in its far western province of Xinjiang, which borders the corridor. , it was reported that the United States had asked China to open the corridor.

Climate
Wakhjir Pass has a tundra climate (Köppen: ET) with an ice cap climate (EF) characteristics, With cold to frigid weather year-round. The warmest months of July and August are slightly above freezing. The area lies in continuous permafrost zone as the mean annual temperature is -11.7 C.