Our Glimpse 77 yesterday (04/25) was of the Wakhan Corridor – a skinny finger of northeast Afghanistan separating Tajikistan and Pakistan extending all the way to China. Click on the link to get the photo. Note the large alluvial fan in the center on the Afghan side of the Amu Darya. Now look closely and you’ll see a tiny white dot on the edge of the fan next to the green of the river bank.

What could that be? Well, here’s my photo of it close up. Certainly no Afghan village. It’s a modern windowless compound completely isolated with no roads, trails, or any other habitation for many miles in any direction, reachable only by helicopter. Any guesses? It’s a CIA interrogation center, where captured Taliban are brought for rather intense debriefings. That’s the Wakhan Surprise. I’ll bet many of you canny old TTPers, however, aren’t surprised at all. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #78 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

This is the Wakhan Corridor traversed by Marco Polo on his way to China in 1273. The river is the Amu Darya, known to Alexander the Great and the ancient Greeks as the Oxus. The Wakhan is the finger of northeast Afghanistan designed in the late 19th century to prevent the Russian Empire in Central Asia from touching the British Empire in India. It now separates Tajikistan from Pakistan with its fingertip the only border Afghanistan has with China.

Thus you’re looking at four countries. The river forms the Tajik-Afghan border – Tajikistan is on the left, Afghanistan on the right, in the center distance are the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan, while in the far distance are the Karakorum mountains of China. This is a fabulously exotic remote part of our world with people living here tracing their ancestry to the troops of Alexander. Oh – and the surprise? I’ll tell you tomorrow. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #77 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)

The Golden College or Madrasa of Tilla-Kori was built by Samarkand ruler Yalangtush Bakhadur in the 1650s to house and teach the best and brightest students of his realm. It stands at the center of the wondrous Registan public square complex of the Silk Road oasis city of Samarkand, known to the ancient Greeks as Marakanda.

It was centuries old when Alexander conquered it in 329 BC. For a thousand years as Central Asia’s great entrepot on the Silk Road between China and the Mediterranean, it was a cosmopolitan center for Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Zoroastrianism, and Nestorian Christianity. Incorporated into the Islamic world in the 700s, sacked by Genghiz Khan in 1220, rebuilt by the time Marco Polo in 1272 described it as “a large and splendid city,” Tamerlane made it his capital in 1370.

I was first in Samarkand to stand astonished at the Registan in 1963. Seeing it now, far more impressively preserved than in the Soviet days, made me gasp – especially how Tilla-Kori is once again lavishly decorated with gold. You’ll gasp too, for it is only one of the innumerable sights you’ll see and experiences you’ll have with your fellow TTPers by joining our Heart of Central Asia this September. If you dream of having a fabulous adventure of a lifetime, let me know at [email protected] and we’ll talk about it. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #223 photo ©Jack Wheeler)

July, 1984. The KPNLF – Khmer People’s National Liberation Front – was the Anti-Communist guerrilla movement fighting the Soviet-backed Vietnamese Communists in Cambodia. When I was first there in 1961, Cambodia was then a land of serenity, with a gentle and tranquil people who were at peace with themselves and the world. Now it was a land of indescribable Communist horror.

It was such a privilege to be with these brave men willing to wage war against that horror and bring freedom to their country. I told their tale in Turning Back the Terror, the February 1985 cover story for Reason magazine. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #20 photo ©Jack Wheeler)