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.
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==