A mountain pass that connects Xinjiang region of China with Northern Areas of Pakistan. It is the highest point on Karakoram Highway, at an altitude of 4,693 metres (15,397 feet), which makes it the highest paved international border crossing in the world.
In addition, several thousand P.L.A. troops are said to be stationed in the Khunjerab Pass on the Xinjiang border to protect Karakoram Highway construction crews, with ready access to Gilgit-Baltistan.
The Karakoram Highway, which links China and Pakistan over the 15,400-foot Khunjerab Pass, winds through some spectacular gorges along the route of the old Silk Road. The international "Friendship Highway," which isn't even paved on the Pakistani side, is so unstable and prone to flash floods that almost 900 workers died during its construction, mostly crushed by landslides.
2015 April 24, Frank Sieren, “Sieren's China: Beijing's 'Marshall Plan' for Pakistan”, in Deutsche Welle[4], archived from the original on August 29, 2015, China[5]:
On the Chinese side we drove up the 4,700-meter-high Khunjerab Pass from Kashgar - which was like driving through the Black Forest to Lake Titisee. At the border station the road ended abruptly, cut off like a piece of cake, before continuing a good meter lower down. The comfortable, tarred road suddenly became a dangerous, rough, rubble-strewn one.
