Trail

I traveled to the Pamir mountains of eastern Tajikistan in the winter, going up and down the rigged road by car in the high mountains along the panj river that formed hundreds of kilometers of the border with Afghanistan, which was literally within a stone's throw for many, any hours. From this Tajik side, I keep seeing the thin endless trail on the Afghan side.

On that trail, "Afghans" have been traveling on foot and donkeys from village to village, from generation to generation, from century to century. Maybe Alexander the Great or Marco Polo, who travelled in the region centuries ago, have taken the same path. The two sides of the valley in the isolated mountains were artificially divided by the narrow river, as a result of the Great Game between the Russian and British empires in the late 19th century. And today, they are still divided –– between Afghanistan and Tajikistan. On the Afghan side, it looked as if time has frozen.