Saser La
Mountain pass in Ladakh, India
Saser Pass, Saser La, or Sasser Pass (el. 5,411 m or 17,753 ft) is a high mountain pass in the Indian union territory of Ladakh on the ancient summer caravan route from Leh to Yarkand, in the Tarim Basin of Xinjiang. It leads from the head of the Nubra Valley into the upper Shyok Valley, on the way to the even higher, but easier, Karakoram Pass.
History
"This was the notorious Sasser, not the highest but probably the most impressive and dangerous [of the passes along the caravan route between Ladakh and Yarkand]."
The Saser Pass could not be avoided on the caravan route in summer and took a huge toll on caravan pack animals, such as ponies and mules. It was too icy for the Bactrian camels, which were the usual pack animals to the north of the Saser Pass.
Saser Pass lies 37 km southeast of the Siachen Glacier area that the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan failed to define clearly.
References
Further reading
Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh. Janet Rizvi. Oxford University Press. New Delhi.
“Saser La” enters the record as mountain pass in Ladakh, India. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Saser, Mountain and pass can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Saser La” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Saser, Mountain and pass provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1130068. Authority coordinates are 35.033, 77.733. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saser La” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.