A narrow corridor 300 km long and 20 to 60 km wide to the east of Afghanistan, on the border with China and Tajikistan.

The Wakhan corridor is a sublime valley of striking beauty, isolated and mountainous. It is home to Wakes and Kirghiz nomads.

A sumptuous forgotten valley, bordered by the Pamir and Indu-Kush mountains. Once used by Marco Polo and the merchants of the Silk Road.

The town of Ishkashim, on the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is the gateway to the Wakhan corridor. Superb and isolated, this 300-kilometre-long valley is dominated by the snow-capped peaks of the Pamir Mountains.

The life of the Wahkis is balanced between the world of the valley and that of the mountains.

Their picturesque villages are set in the middle of green valleys carved out by a river, populated with fields of barley, wheat and poplars. It is surrounded by the monumental silhouettes of the Pamir mountains.

In summer, they set off into the mountains on the transhumance, guiding their herds of sheep, goats and yaks across a succession of glacial valleys, steppes and plateaux to the best pastures.

The Khirgyz nomads live higher up in the mountains, in a fierce wilderness with harsh winters. At an altitude of 4,000 m, the Khirgyz are the most isolated high-altitude community in the world. They live an ancestral way of life, following the rhythm of their cattle, moving their camps every three or four months.

Trekking the Wakhan Corridor

The Wakhan is the strangest line on Afghanistan’s map. A thin corridor of land reaching east towards China, hemmed in by Tajikistan and Pakistan and filled by the Pamir. It’s one of the remotest places we go, and for a lot of travellers it’s the whole reason they come.

A corridor between empires

This sliver of land was drawn up as a buffer between the Russian and British empires, which is why it exists at all. Today it’s home to Wakhi farmers in the lower valleys and Kyrgyz herders living with their yaks up on the high Pamir plateau.

What you come for

• Empty valleys under huge peaks, day after day.

• Nights in village homes and herders’ camps.

• Wildlife: Marco Polo sheep, and if you’re lucky the tracks of snow leopard.

• And the calm of it. Thanks to its isolation, it’s one of the safest corners of the country.

The trek itself

Most Wakhan treks run somewhere between a week and a fortnight. Trips usually start from Ishkashim, at the mouth of the corridor, and head up from there on foot and by vehicle where the track allows, going deeper into the Pamir each day.

Good to know

• It’s high-altitude walking on basic trails, often above 4,000 metres, with simple homestays and camps. You don’t need to be an athlete, but you do need to be fit and used to several days on your feet.

• The window is short, roughly June to September, when the passes are clear.

Trek the Wakhan with us

We run the Wakhan as a guided trek and can fold it into a longer private trip.