Wakhan Corridor. Pamir Mountains.
[Trekking between big mountains & New routes on remote peaks]
[Sept 2010]
[Afghanistan & Tajikistan]
The yurt we stayed in high in the Wakhan mountain range
Following a Wild Frontiers lecture at the Royal Geographical Society I was inspired to plan an expedition to a rarely-visited part of central Asia. At the time the Wakhan Corridor was a very peaceful part of Afghanistan, a much misunderstood country.
The Corridor was travelled through by Alexander the Great and Marco Polo. Furthermore according the National Geographic's Genographic Project, the ancestors of all Western Europeans travelled over the Boroghil Pass into the Corridor on their journey from the Indian Subcontinent to Europe.
We undertook a trek through the Wakhan Range where we met incredibly friendly people, who welcomed us into their nomadic villages.
After the trek we headed north to Tajikistan where we travelled up into the Pamir Mountains, as known as the Roof of the World. In a remote valley here we summited a series of unclimbed mountains - eight peaks over 5,000m.