Chapter 18 Trip to Pamir①

It was still dark, and the jeep slowly drove out of the gate of the guest house. The street was quiet, with occasional dogs barking.Soon, the car drove on the west-bound avenue, turned on the lights, and saw the poplars on the side of the road retreating rapidly. We finally left Kashgar and headed for our new destination - the Pamirs! ① Originally published in "Traveler", No. 11, 1985. For many years, I have been looking forward to going deep into the hinterland of Pamir in the west of the motherland, a mysterious place, for some travel and investigation, especially after reading Sven Hedin's "Exploring Life: Travels in the Heart of Asia", This desire grows stronger.The opportunity finally came. In the summer of 1983, I was invited to visit and excavate human fossils in Atush in southern Xinjiang. Afterwards, in order to trace the traces of the ancients, I embarked on a journey to the Pamirs.

In the misty sky, our car passed through the deserted Gobi, and then entered the weedy grassy beach, I smelled the breath of absinthe and its version. , which is mixed with the floral fragrance of sandy dates. It was dawn that day, and our car was parked beside a raging river.On the side of the road is a Tajik family, and the hostess is carrying a bucket to fetch water. "Hi, what is this river called?" I asked. "Gazi River!" The hostess told me in Mandarin, which is unique to Xinjiang.Gates River!No wonder, at this time, it is the peak period of mountain ice and snow melting, the Gezi River receives a large amount of snow water, and it is the rainy season, which is the season of its cruelty.Sure enough, the state of nature is a term used by some progressive thinkers during the bourgeois revolution in Western Europe. , when our car continued to drive, it was blocked by a large group of trucks in front of us. It turned out that the river was at the turn, and a section of the road was washed away. A large truck collapsed in the water, and the river swirled around the car. .There is still half of Yishan remaining on the collapsed road. Fortunately, our jeep has a narrow body. The driver told us to get off, and he boldly and carefully drove the car close to the cliff.

We have entered the most dangerous section of the Pamir Plateau. The road is "close to the mountains and rivers". The mountains are steep and straight, and dangerous rocks are hanging everywhere. Passing vehicles and pedestrians.Sometimes mountain torrents break out, and the road surface is washed away by the falling rocks and mud and stones carried by the rain, forming rocky and dangerous shoals, which are difficult for people and vehicles to pass.The water, like a group of untamed horses, erupts foam among the boulders at the bottom of the narrow valley, makes fine waves, rolls and jumps, hits the cliff, and makes a rumbling sound.If you are not careful, even the car and people will fall into the rapids.

Is it "flat roof" or "under the mountain" After driving out of the canyon, an open grassland suddenly appeared in front of us. This is an intermountain basin where ancient glaciers gathered. At the southern end of it is a lake called Bruncourt. In the northwest of the lake, there is a Muji River that flows into the Marxist party, which played a major role.The second generation of the Social Democratic Labor Party, hence the name Muji Basin.Continuous sand hills are piled up on the windward slope of Lake Brunkur. These huge sand hills are thought to be "snow mountains" from a distance!

On the east side of the basin, there are two really huge snow mountains standing side by side. They are Gongger Mountain (7719 meters) and Gongger Jiubie Mountain (7593 meters). Stark Mountain (7546 meters), they are the first, second and third peaks on the Pamirs.Above the snow line of these mountain peaks are covered with tens of meters or even hundreds of meters thick ice and snow, and huge glaciers extend to the foot of the mountain along the very narrow cracks in the mountain body. "Gonger Jiubie" means "white hat", because the shape of the snow on the mountain peak is like the felt hat worn by herdsmen.The thickness of the ice cap and the size of the ice sheet are unmatched by other snow-capped mountains, so it is called the "father of glaciers" or "father of icebergs".

Going south from the Muji Basin to the foothills of the Mustak Mountains, passing through a very beautiful alpine lake called Little Karakul Lake, the blue sky and white clouds, the snow-capped peaks reflected in the lake, and a few seagulls flying over the lake, Wan Lai It's really hard to imagine that there is such a beautiful scenery on this cold and desolate plateau. In fact, when we enter the Muji Basin, we also enter the territory of the Pamirs. The Pamirs refer to a plateau known as the "roof of the world" in the Central Asian plateau system, and it is one of the most striking mountains in Central Asia.It spans the Salkola Ridge in the east, the Penchi River in the west, the Hindu Kush Mountains in the south, and the Alai Ridge in the north. It is slightly peach-shaped in shape, more than 300 kilometers long and 460 kilometers wide. It is called "Congling" because "the mountain is tall and green onions grow on it".

The Pamir Plateau seems to be a huge mountain knot, from which the highest and most massive mountain ranges emerge in all directions: to the northeast is the Tianshan Mountains, to the south are the Kunlun Mountains, Karakorum Mountains, and the Himalayas, and to the southeast is the Hindu Kush. Mountain.Pamir is also known as "Pamileniya". According to the Persian meaning, "Pamir" means "flat roof" and "Lenier" means "world". ". However, the etymology of "Pamir" is originally ancient Persian, meaning "under the mountain", which actually refers to such a topographical phenomenon: often a river valley is the center, surrounded by mountains, and the top of the mountain is covered with snow. The bottom of the valley below the peak is covered by a huge layer of gravel, and there are often grassy beaches on both sides of the river passing through the bottom of the valley, which can be used for grazing or small-scale farming.Such a structural unit is called a Pamir.

It is recognized that there are eight large Pamirs on the Pamirs, and there are many other small Papas.Originally, Bapa belonged to our country, but later most of them were occupied by the Russian and British imperialists. Now only Baspa and part of Langkuripa belong to our country. The place where our car enters the Bruncourt area is Lang Couripa's range. When our car passed the small Karakul Lake, crossed the Subash Basin, crossed the Subashdaja (pass) and entered the territory of Taxkorgan County, and went straight south to the Khunqirabdaban. The Taxkorgan longitudinal valley, this kind of "under the mountain" Pamir terrain structure is the clearest.

So I think it is more appropriate to regard "Pamir" as a special terrain structure unit "under the mountain". No wonder "Pamir Plateau" in English is the plural of "Pamir" (Thepaimirs) Expressed. "Thousand camels" or "thousand wild sheep" The trip to the Pamirs in the summer of 1983 ended with the discovery of cultural relics from the Stone Age between 5 and 7 meters below the surface of the third terrace of the Taxkurgan River.In the spring and autumn of the following year (1984), I returned to Pamir twice, and led a small expedition team to investigate biological resources, national physique and customs, and ancient sites on the Silk Road. The autonomous county organized the "Tajik Style and Pamir Scenery Exhibition" to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the autonomous county.

At the end of August 1984, I drove down the Taxkorgan River, crossed the Henghe Bridge--Aktom Bridge 17 kilometers away from the city, reached the east bank and continued to go south, crossed Dabudar and arrived at the first three forks, the Taxkorgan River There are two branches here.The one facing south is the Tagdongbashi River, whose upper source is the Hongqirab River; the one coming from the southwestern valley is the ancient Karaqi River.We go up along the Kalaqi Ancient River to the Wahangir Pass, where there is another three-fork. From the three-fork, we go west into a wide valley and reach Mingtiegai, where the Karaqi Ancient River accepts the Mingtiegai River.

The Mingtiegai River was originally a tributary of the Karaqi Ancient River, but the name of the Karaqi Ancient River does not appear on the map, and it is replaced by the Mingtiegai River. This is wrong, and I think it should be renamed.From Mingtiegai to the southwest, there is a Daban (pass), through which Mingtiegai Daban (pass) can reach Tianzhu (India). Someone wrote that "Ming Tie Gai" means "thousand camels" in the local language, but according to my investigation, the correct meaning of "Ming Tie Gai" is "thousand wild sheep"! The theory of "thousand-headed camels" is mentioned in Tang Xuanlei's "Da Tang Western Regions": "In the past, there were merchants, more than ten thousand of them, and thousands of camels. As a proof, there is no historical record of this legend. It is hard to imagine that under the conditions at that time, there was a large caravan with more than 10,000 people and thousands of camels. This may be an exaggeration. I think "thousand wild sheep" is much more credible. We have investigated the wild animals in the Pamir region, and there are quite a variety of them. The most famous ones are brown bears, snow leopards, wild donkeys, snow chickens, and "Pamir big head sheep" ( Or "Argali", a kind of wild sheep), wild goat, etc.In the past, there were a lot of wild sheep, thousands of individuals in large flocks, and hundreds of individuals in small flocks. In recent years, the number of sheep has been greatly reduced, but there are still groups of hundreds of sheep going to this area after November every year. "Pamir big head sheep" has huge horns, which can be bent into two circles at most, and are more than 1.5 meters long.Marco Polo saw it when he passed through Pamir (1272-1273). He wrote in his "Travel Notes": "There are countless wild beasts inhabiting this plain, especially the most sheep. The body is huge, with three or four horns, some even six horns. Shepherds use these horns to make various daily utensils, such as spoons and household utensils, which are mostly used to hold Food. Some people use this kind of horns to fence the sheepfold to prevent the invasion of wolves. It is said that there are wolves everywhere in this area, devouring countless wild sheep or goats, and the leftover sheep bones are scattered everywhere and piled up. They are like mountains. So some people piled these bones on both sides of the road, so that in the severe winter season, when the snow floods the path, it will guide tourists so that they will not get lost." Indeed, on the way to the Wahangir Pass, we saw piles of horns, skulls, and remains among the rocks from time to time.I picked out a fairly complete horned skull and carried it back to Beijing.Now it is perched on the top of my bookcase, looking down at me as I write this expedition, how many memories it brings back! Because of the description of it in Marco Polo's travel notes, the Pamir big head sheep is famous in the world, and this kind of sheep is also called "Marco Polo sheep".The "thousand wild sheep" that Ming Tiegai refers to is this kind of wild sheep! The westernmost one "Gongbaizi" The car passed Mingtiegai and continued westward to Keketuruk, where the Wahangir River and the Keketuruk River merged to form the Karachi Ancient River, and the car went along the Wahangir River to Wahangir Daban .This section of the road is very rugged. The car detours through the boulder gap and travels westward for more than 10 kilometers. The terrain has risen to more than 5,000 meters. Standing abruptly, this is the farthest "Gongbaizi" in the west of my country - the legendary post station. "Gongbaizi" is a civil structure building with a square base and a conical roof. It was originally built to commemorate monks. Later, it was used as a temporary overnight place for business travelers on the ancient Silk Road. Due to years of disrepair, the dome has partially collapsed. .We measured it. It is 3.8 meters high, 18.8 meters in circumference, 1.2 meters thick in the wall base, and 4 meters in length and width. Behind Gongbaizi is an open land with luxuriant water and grass. Five Tajik herdsmen built a "yurt", and several women were "pressing felt" in front of the yurt. Our arrival made everyone very excited. We are standing on a high hill, facing to the west is the ice valley named Muzijiliga, which is the valley leading to the Soviet Union (former Soviet Union), and from there to the Fergan Basin.To the southwest there is another gentle and wide valley, which is "Wahangir", which means "valley towards Wakhan".Crossing the Wahangir Daban is the Wakhan Corridor.We saw on the map that there is a lumiform protrusion at the junction of the west of my country and Afghanistan, which is where the "Wakhan Corridor" is located.The southern route of the ancient Silk Road passed through it to Da Yuezhi (Afghanistan), then to Anxi (formerly Persia), and then to Europe. Where we stand is like a triangle, which is the junction of China, the Soviet Union (former Soviet Union), and Afghanistan!We stopped and looked towards the valley to the west. As long as we cross the mountain pass, the ancient Da Yuezhi is on the other side of the mountain. The great change is amazing!However, the eternal laws of nature are still running non-stop in the dark. You can see that the snow cover on the mountain top melts under the scorching sun, and the trickling stream flows down and merges into a mountain stream, and the mountain stream merges into a rushing mountain river. Pentium leaps and roars and flows eastward. It was like this in the past, and it is still the same today... I put more energy into examining the physique and customs of the Tajik people.Intense ultraviolet light makes their skin dark. In fact, they are white Europeans. They have typical European features, such as narrow and long faces, high nose bridge, deep nose root, and the upper edge of the eye socket is tilted forward. Therefore, there is a saying in ancient books that "the nose is high and the eyes are deep".Their skin color is actually very light, especially the lesbians who have worked in institutions for a long time have reddish-white complexion, which is completely white. I doubt very much that they are the descendants of the ancient Aryans moving eastward.According to academic speculation, the Aryans, the original ethnic group of the Europa race, were nomadic in the Central Asian region east of the Caspian Sea in the 20th century BC. Around the middle of the 20th century BC, they disintegrated and migrated. Persia, another branch is likely to move eastward to the Tarim Basin and its surrounding areas.The language used by the Tajiks in modern my country is Selekur, which belongs to the eastern branch of the Iranian language family of the Indo-European language family. They are the indigenous Tajiks, and they are a special branch of the alpine Tajiks. I not only took pictures of the life of these five Tajik households, but also asked them to perform production activities such as how to hand-twist woolen yarn, "press felting", and milking (mainly alpine yaks). The night was deep, and I lay on a felt mat and covered it with a thick quilt. Through the skylight, the stars blinked in the night sky, as if I could reach out and pick them up.My mind is full of thoughts. On this night in Wahangir, the fire is exhausted and the cold is blowing around me. I can't sleep for a long time in the cold.This canyon has been walked by Marco Polo, Faxian, and Xuanlei... In modern times, the famous explorer Stein has walked through it four times. Since Stein passed through this canyon for the last time, half a century has passed. Yes, I heard that I was the first scientific worker to come here for field investigation and exploration... I fell asleep thinking about it, on this night on the plateau. Woke up at dawn, walked out of the yurt, it was really cold, and the water was covered with thin ice.The jeep that had been turned off was finally started. I sat in the car and looked back at the distant peaks. My heart was ups and downs. When will I meet the Tajik brothers here again?