Tajikistan The Fedchenko Glacier is the world’s longest and largest glacier outside of the Polar regions. Nearly fifty miles in length and covering an area of more than seven hundred square miles, it is well over half a mile thick in places. It winds down off of Mount Garmo towards the border with Kyrgyzstan. The Pamir Mountains are located in an extremely remote corner of … [Read more...]
DOOR TO HELL
Turkmenistan The Door to Hell (also known as the Crater of Fire) is a natural wonder of sorts helped along by poor human foresight. It is a crater sitting on top of a large supply of methane gas which has now been burning continuously since 1971. Rather than becoming a place to avoid, the Door to Hell has since become a tourist destination and strangely a popular place to go … [Read more...]
THAR DESERT
India/Pakistan The Thar Desert is a realm of ancient beauty, history and legend. Spreading out along much of the border of modern day India and Pakistan, the Thar Desert has served as the frontier between the western world (Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East) and the eastern world (India, China and the Far East) since ancient times. Unlike most of the world’s … [Read more...]
NANGA PARBAT
Pakistan (8,125 m) – Highest Mountain Face On Earth Nanga Parbat is one of the great peaks of the Himalayas, and enjoys several distinctions. It appears on the top twenty lists for both highest and most prominent peaks in the world, with only one other mountain, Everest, on both lists. It is also famous for the massive vertical faces on every side, including the Rupal Face, … [Read more...]
K2
China/Pakistan (8,611 m) – 2nd Tallest Mountain in the World/Asia The uninspiringly named K2 is the second highest mountain in the world after Everest. It is the highest peak of the Karakorum Mountains, which is adjacent to the Himalayas where China, India and Pakistan meet. Part of a mountain group that had the designations K1 through K5, the other peaks were later … [Read more...]
BATTLES OF CHILIANWALA & GUJARAT (BATTLEFIELD)
Punjab, Pakistan (1849 AD) The Battles of Chilianwala and Gujrat were arguably the most important engagements of the Anglo-Sikh Wars in what is now Northern India and Pakistan. Of all the peoples of India, the Sikhs, thanks in large part to geography, put up the fiercest resistance to British colonial rule on the Subcontinent. In the first battle, the Sikhs fought the … [Read more...]
BATTLE OF THE HYDASPES (HYDASPES BATTLEFIELD)
Mong, Pakistan (326 BC) The Battle of Hydaspes was the definitive battle of the India campaign of Alexander the Great, and the most distant major battle ever fought by a European power until the colonial era. It was among his last major victories and essentially marked the end of the Macedonian march to the east. Although a definitive triumph for Alexander, it is also … [Read more...]
TOMB OF BAHA AL-DIN AL-NAQSHBANDI
Bukhara, Uzbekistan There are many orders of Sufism, but only one, the Naqshbandi, which traces its origins back to Abu Bakr, the first caliph. Thus the Naqshbandi are one of the few Sunni oriented Sufi orders, and possibly the most important and influential religious institution in Central Asia. The order’s founder was Baha Al-Din Al-Naqshbandi, who stands out as one of the … [Read more...]
SULEIMAN MOUNTAIN
Osh, Kyrgyzstan Suleiman Mountain has been venerated as a sacred place since ancient times. Named in honor of the Qu’ranic Prophet Suleiman, who may or may not be the same person as King Solomon of the Hebrew Bible, the mountain has been visited by religious pilgrims since well before the advent of Islam. The mountain itself is an absolutely amazing rock formation which … [Read more...]
KHAST IMAM MOSQUE (MASJID KHAST IMAM)
Tashkent, Uzbekistan Generally speaking, the most revered artifacts of Islam that have survived the centuries have been preserved in places that make geographical sense: Mecca, Cairo, Istanbul and so forth. So it is unusual that the Uthman Qur’an, believed to be the oldest known copy of the Qur’an and which according to tradition was once in the possession of Uthman, Ali or … [Read more...]
