[1] This is the route traditionally thought to have been followed by Alexander the Great in the spring of 329 BCE when he led his army from the Kabul Valley across the mountains to Bactria (later Tokharistan in the north).

Vincent Smith states that Alexander took his troops across both the Khāwak and the Kaoshān or Kushan Pass.

[3] The Khāwak is most probably the pass used by the famous Chinese Buddhist pilgrim monk, Xuanzang, on his return from India to China in the early 7th century.

When dictating his account over twenty years later he remembered spreading felt cloth in front of his camels to prevent them sinking into the snow.

[6] The Khāwak was also crossed by Timur (1336–1405), and by Captain John Wood on his return journey to the sources of the Oxus in the mid-19th century.