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 . See also Tegermansu Pass Beyik Pass Kilik Pass Mintaka Pass China–Tajikistan border China–Pakistan border Notes References External links Wakhan & the Afghan Pamir - In the footsteps of Marco Polo - Brochure of the region by Aga Khan Foundation Mountain passes of China Mountain passes of Afghanistan Mountain passes of Xinjiang Wakhan Afghanistan–China