Torugart Pass

Torugart Pass
	Border crossing at the Torugart Pass
Pass height	3752 m
expansion	Street
Mountains	Torugart Mountains ( Tianshan )
	map
Coordinates	40 ° 35 '33 " N , 75 ° 25' 38" E Coordinates: 40 ° 35 '33 " N , 75 ° 25' 38" E

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The Torugart Pass ( Kyrgyz Торугарт / Torugart ; Chinese 圖嚕噶爾特山口 / 图噜噶尔特山口 , Pinyin túlūgáĕrtè shānkŏu ; also Turugart ) is a 3752 m high mountain pass in the Central Asian Mountains of Tianshan . The road leading over the pass connects the Kyrgyz region of Naryn in the north with the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang in the south, which is part of the People's Republic of China .

The top of the pass is about 400 km from the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek . Via Balyktschy and Naryn , 190 km from the pass, you reach the narrow Torugart pass road, which is often impassable in winter due to snow and the risk of avalanches . Lake Chatyrköl is located in the Aksaital near the pass on the Kyrgyz side .

On the Chinese side, the top of the pass is 1630 km from Urumqi , the capital of Xinjiang, and 165 km from Kashgar . The Chinese border station (吐尔尕特口岸) is located at an altitude of 2000 m, over 100 km from the top of the pass.

history

In 1881 a border station was first established by Russia and China at the Torugart Pass . In 1905, the British consul in Kashgar, George Macartney , found that the Russians had built a 27-foot road from the Kyrgyz side to the Torugart Pass and half a mile further into Chinese territory. In 1906, under Russian pressure, China allowed the road to be continued on Chinese territory; the construction of the road to Kashgar was financed by the Sino-Russian transport bank with 20 million rubles. In 1952, the Torugart Pass replaced the border crossing at Irkeschtam, 165 km to the southwest, as the most important road connection between Xinjiang and the then Kyrgyz SSR . Some works by Tschingis Aitmatow give a literary impression of the circumstances of the road construction and long-distance traffic at that time on this route , e.g. B. You my poplar in a red headscarf .

In the 1960s the pass was closed as a result of the Sino-Soviet rift , but reopened in 1983. In 1995, China moved its border station to a lower location. The Asian Development Bank supported the expansion of the pass road on the Kyrgyz side.

Today the Torugart Pass and Irkeschtam are the only routes between Kyrgyzstan and China that are open to cross-border traffic. Until 2002, the Torugart was the only border crossing between the two countries that could be used by tourists .

If so, the passport is only open on one side: from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., you can cross the border from Kyrgyzstan to China, and between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. in the opposite direction The pass cannot be crossed on weekends and public holidays, and private vehicles are hardly allowed to cross the border. In 2004, registered goods worth 4.4 million US dollars were imported into Kyrgyzstan via the Torugart Pass; in 2005, an average of 1,430 vehicles crossed the pass per month. However, the UNODC speaks of negligent controls and organized smuggling ; Trucks can also be seen crossing the border on Sundays. The proportion of unregistered goods imported through passports from China in Kyrgyzstan is estimated at 50%.