Bounded by the vast slopes of the great Central Asian steppe and the barren dunedrift void of the Taklamakan, at the nexus of the Tian Shan, Hindu Kush, Karakorum, and Kunlun, rises the Pamir Plateau - The Roof of the World. From its brink empty space pools out beyond the human capacity for sight. The Pamirs are a place of unrivaled austere beauty.

In the Pamir, a hardy mix of people - Kyrgyz, Tajik, Wakhi, Pamiri thrive in the inhospitable highlands, tending their livestock in the narrow ribbons of grazable pasture and nurturing fields of golden wheat along riverbanks gray with glacial silt. In the absence of sensory static, kindness abounds. The food, like the landscape from which it derives, is untroubled by excess. It is plain and simple. The heart of the people here is underpinned by reactionary and innate generosity - kindness in the face of adversity.

In the dearth of biotia, the mind expands to fill the space. The Pamir meditates like the wind that parses over it, breathing deeply. At a cursory glance it might appear lifeless - a bleak, skeletal space - but when one steps out into the openness, the mind is full to the brim. All things are brought intimately close, magnified by the intensity of absence, and the small things grow big. Such spaces arouse a silent acuity so palpable that it can be felt on the dry wind, smelled as the crush of wild oregano underfoot, glimpsed in the scintillation of hard blue sun on the energetic surface of a singing river.

We at Great Goat Expeditions are pleased to welcome you to the Roof of the World.