Unfortunately, it does happen....

Russian impression in persian urban landscape

Booooo, that's a scary title.
Whenever I have time, I keep churning /organizing the mountains of images shot in Tajikistan. I found it interesting to put together a small set of images showing the odd but somewhat attractive (?) urban landscape (the interiors will be another blog entry later). These "things" are all the result of the Russian influence on design, left in Tajikistan, the only Persian speaking country in Central Asia. Tajikistan was the first country in Central Asia to gain independence, in December 1991. But it is still struggling to find an identity.
Enjoy... or maybe not.

New "Portfolio" link on my website

I have just put a new "Portfolio" link under "Stories" on my website.
Here is a screen shot:


There is a "heavy" quote to read on the opening image, while the rest of the images load in the back: "Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did NOT do that is inconsolable." - Sydney J. Harris wrote this, an American journalist.

I figured, knowing how rushed-up some photo editors are, it would be good to have a quick picture summary, hence the Portfolio link. Tough call of course on the selection of images - it's always hard to judge my own images. I selected them thinking to 1/ show diversity and therefore avoid repetition in the image settings 2/put some new recent material 3/make it short - only 20 images. Voila, so that's done.

I will double the blog today, another one coming up.

A wedding aftermath.

Feeling hungry? A new wedding regulation took place last July 09 in Tajikistan's Pamir mountains, among this Ismaili community: no more than 150 invited guests were to be allowed and no more than 3 hours shall be spent eating in the big halls that are rented out for weddings. That meant less time to eat the huge amount of food in between the endless speeches to the newly weds... and a bit of waste.
I shot these images in 5 mn running away from the waiters who were trying to kick me out. We were indeed past the allowed 3 hours.

This comes as a compliment to a more orderly food disposal, which you might remember if you click here. Maybe I should do posters for my kitchen.

And here some more random ones - there is much too much to say about Pamiri weddings - some of the traditions are closely link to pre-Islamic practices, such as fumigation of the houses with "Strakhm" (aka Buivekh or Achillea mellefolium), the colors that must be worn by the bride and groom etc. I witnessed all this and I should certainly do a page dedicated to Western Himalayan wedding - from the Karakoram, Hindukush and Pamir.

In the end, cake is always a hit...

Roof of the world

I have a few big spreads in the current issue of Le Figaro magazine, one of France's prominent magazine. You can see it here. It's titled "les afghans du toit du monde", "Afghans on the roof of the world". Why Roof of the world? Pourquoi Toit du Monde? ... et bien voila: the Pamir, or Pamirs rather, as there are several, is the original Roof of the world. Here from Wikipedia: "The name Roof of the World was first applied to the Pamirs. The British explorer John Wood, writing in 1838, described Bam-i-Duniah (Roof of the World) as a "native expression" (presumably Wakhi)." Also fascinating: Pamir highlands is the nodal point of the mountain systems of Tien- Shan, Kun-Lun, Karakoram, The Himalayas and Hindukush, and therefore called the roof of the world. Here in full.
Ah: I am ready to fight for this one. I know it's a lost battle, but Roof of the World is the Pamirs, it's the traditional, original term, and people should know that Tibet or worth, Mt Everest, is a term borrowed to the Pamir... take that!

A view of the Roof of the world and the story behind:

That's an image shot from the Tajik Air flight bringing me from Delhi to Dushanbe in 2004, flying of the Pamirs. It was in the evening and beside me Russian passengers were doing the inevitable Russian thing: having vodka shots. We were sitting face to face, like in a train, no one wearing safety belt - they were none anyway. We played cards and ended up staying in Dushanbe at the house of the guy sitting across from us.
I planned the same route to get to Tajikistan in 2008 and found out in Delhi that the flight didn't exist anymore... Damn... "Not enough donors" told me the Tajik ambassador in Delhi. "We need people to donate, you should donate so we can fly Delhi-Dushanbe!!!" And then he charged us 620 USD (six-hundred twenty american dollars!!!) for three 3 months Tajik visa. What a steal... To try and find an alternative flight was a total nightmare, I had to pull all my skills as an impatient travel agent - we went through Dubai in the end. See the full story here on Mareile's Blog of our 2008 family trip to Tajikistan.

Hey: I AM BACK IN HONG KONG, CHINA, after 5 months on the road - gotta go back to dusting off the office...

Perpignan, Paris, Munich... et Hong Kong alors??

A major break on the blog front as I was running around Europe like a headless chicken the last 2/3 weeks.

A propos headless chickens.... do you know Mike?? incredibly, Mike the rooster lived for 18 months after his head got cut off. see that below? and read that... unbelievable but true!


Left Tajikistan on August 25th and after a few family days north of Montpellier, here is what happened:
- first there was Perpignan. Perpignan was great this year for me - my second time there: the first time, in 2002, a bit "green" out of school, was more stressful than exciting, I guess I was a bit too desperate to meet editors and "connect". This time, more laid back, I met some great people and just enjoyed the weird mix, vin blanc and passionate discussions.
- right after this, hitting the steel while its hot, I headed off to Paris and followed up on a couple of meetings, magazine editors, galleries, book publishers... My yearly round in France. It was jammed packed and quite productive: in fact, people are quite approachable. Among follow up on positive meetings, I will get an 8 pages in Le Figaro Magazine next week, coming out on this Saturday 19th 2009. Apparently, it's pretty major, Le Fig Mag as its known rarely does 8 pages anymore on reportage. So I am excited, it will be a great exposure in my homeland.
- after Paris, nothing better than a 4 days climb in North Italy, near Lago di Garda. I lead a few 6A climbs, I was aching, I am utterly out of shape... Tajikistan's heavy russian food is taking its toll.

Currently in Munich, Germany, I will be back in Hong Kong on September 18th, just in the path of a big typhoon that flooded our top floor apparently.

This month, I am also featured in Outside magazine (US), in the "your toughest shot" section. A picture shot in Siberia where I was left in a winter night and almost served as diner to the local bears - it was tough and so I called for mama.. click here to see the link.

Also just in: I will head out to Pakistan's northern areas - probably my favorite place on earth, on assignment. Can't talk about it for now, but an interesting story I have been thinking of for years. I am excited. I should be there the first 2 weeks of October.

Visa pour l'image 2009

And again this year: a story on the Afghan Kyrgyz that I submitted to Perpignan's international photojournalism festival "Visa pour l'image", will be projected - it should be presented at the evening screening on Sept 1st, during the professional week.
I should be in Perpignan from 1st Sept until 5th Sept, feshly back from Tajikistan...

Banff Mountain Culture photo competition

Back from a wonderful trek and here it is, just in: a portrait of Marbet with her red cheek won best mountain culture picture for the Banff Mountain Photography Competition 2009. Here s a link...

Away yet again

Sorry, I was away for too long - and am about to leave again.
Real quick run down:
- 1300 Km around Eastern Pamir, all the way to Shaymak, the China/Afghanistan/Tajikistan/Pakistan border - among firsts for me: saw wolves , spotted Marco Polo sheep and soaked in an outdoor bubbly hotspring, al the while checking out Afghanistan's Little Pamir.
- shooting of a documentary (video and still images) around the Roof of the World festival (took place on July 25th in Khorog), for the Aga Khan Foundation. Over 6000 people attended the festival, Mareile Paley did the promotion for it. Must have been good!
- following this, held a multimedia workshop at the University of Central Asia, here in Khorog, Tajikistan.
- just shot an image bank for Pamir Energy, the first PPP (Public-Private Partnesrhip) company in Central Asia.

And now... off tomorrow for some trekking over the 5000m Vrang Pass (the trek ends in Vrang village, in the middle of the Wakhan corridor, on the Tajik side of it). Couldn't find anything proper on the net about it and haven't met anyone here who has gone over it. We should have impressive views of Peak Karl Marx (I know... how romantic) and Peak Engel before plunging into the Wakhan.

Should take us approximately 5 days. Catch you then!

End of the valley

Last week, I went for a trek up Bartang valley in the Pamir mountains of Tajikistan and at the end of the valley, there was this girl swinging on a lone tree.

Karakoram's High Roads - Les hautes routes du Karakoram

Eric Shipton, one of my personal hero and a famous british explorer once said that a good adventure should be planned on a back of an envelope in 5mn the day prior to departure. This is what we did with Bruno Collard in September 2006. We used e-mail for lack of envelope.

Extract from the K2climb.net website, which pretty much says it all:
Bruno Collard and Matthieu Paley went to the remote Braldu Valley in Shimshal, in Pakistan's Karakoram mountains, to look for traces of a long-forgotten mountain pass that once linked the edge of the British Indian colonies with the ancient caravan Silk Road. On their trek far off the beaten track, the men found what they were looking for and still had time to bag a first ascent on a virgin 6000er.

Here is the the full story

And in French, summary from the small video done by Bruno, on Dailymotion.com:
En 1937, le célèbre explorateur britannique du nom d’Eric Shipton terminait l’exploration de la région la plus inaccessible du royaume des Indes, dans le massif du Karakoram. Il fut particulièrement intrigué par d’anciens passages utilisés par des hommes jusqu’au 19ième siècle et situées à presque 6000 mètres d’altitude. Il écrivait à ce propos: « Quelque soit la raison pour laquelle les cols ne sont plus empruntés, que les voyageurs d’aujourd’hui trouvent les cols fermés et qu’ils ont le plus grand mal à obtenir des informations sur l’existence des itinéraire qui y menaient autrefois est tout à fait exceptionnel. Il serait intéressant d’un point de vue historique d’envoyer une expédition dans ce pays pour repérer les restes des anciens itinéraires, de localiser les ruines, et pour déterminer l'histoire migratrice des premiers peuples de ces régions isolées».
La découverte des restes d’un squelette humain situé à plus d’une semaine de marche de la civilisation confirme nos soupçons : ici, à près de 6000m d’altitude, nous tenons dans nos mains la preuve incroyable qui témoigne du passage des hommes à travers les glaciers du Karakoram. Mais que faisaient-ils ? Pillage ? Commerce avec les vallées voisines situées vers l’ancien Turkestan? Cette migration intéressa des générations d’explorateurs britanniques pendant des décennies.

Les hautes routes du Karakoram – Partie 1
envoyé par blankonthemap.

This second Part (Partie 2) below is quite funny, especially our first failed attempt at crossing the Bradlu river on foot, or that thrown shoe that ended up in the river. I nearly pissed myself on that one!

Les hautes routes du Karakoram – Partie 2
envoyé par blankonthemap.

La Gacilly photo festival, France

The biggest outdoor photo festival in France - http://www.festivalphoto-lagacilly.com/ - over 200.000 expected visitors.
I am showing my story on the Afghan Kyrgyz. Here a couple of snapshots from "my section", it will be up until mid-September 09.

What to do with rotten teeth?

Here the answer, at the bazaar today.

Sopa Award

If that talks to you, I just won the Society of Publishers in Asia's award for "Excellence in Feature Photography". It went to a story I shot in Pakistan, Hunza ( titled "A World Away" ) in Oct. 2007, published in Destinasian in 2008.
They went quite lyrical on the comments: "Simply stunning photos, the kind that leap off the page and invite you to walk into them. Gorgeous images from a far-away land I know I'll probably never get to, but now at least can dream about."

Back to the KGB office...

Fill me up on Central Asia.

Hospitality is non-stop in Central Asia - it is a constant given in Tajikistan. Salty milk tea, fresh yoghurt, always candies, maybe eggs, butter and all delicious milky derivatives such as cream and cottage cheese and more milk tea with sugar and flat bread to spread cheery jam on, add some fried fish and you better get up and start walk up that mountain again... that is if you managed to avoid the first vodka shot that always somehow comes with the entire bottle.

Have a click on this:

Belly full of flowers: a dead ibex in the river.

Donkey trekking will come, but for now, a cute memory: in sept. 2003, we were trying to get over an un-previously crossed pass, the Wodwashk pass in a remote valley in Pakistan, on the borders of Afghanistan and China. As the trek might bring a new way between 2 valleys, we had no option but to go with the "Nambardar", the village head - a worryingly inexperienced man when it came to mountain trekking - he would head straight into the crevasse area. As we neared the pass and it started to snow, I got terribly sick: a bad case of diahrrea.
A bit further that day we found a dead ibex in the stream I had drank off the day before. I pointed that out to the Nambardar who responded with a pitiful face "Well that can't be it: ibex only eat flowers, there is just no way to get sick from a dead Ibex!".

The view below Wodwashk pass:

Matthieu is roaming in Gorno Badakhshan

I am heading to the far end of Tajikistan's Gorno Badakshan region, near the China border, all geared up with tent and powered by an old russian jeep.
I will be back in a week, 10 days. Let's talk about donkey trekking in the Hindukush when I am back: whatchyouthink?

Some links, des liens.

I make the eventual "Matthieu Paley" google search to see where I am on the web. A few things showed up over the last couple of months, voila:

- I am happy about my recent win of PDN Photo Annual 09, the Marty Forscher price for Humanitarian photography.

- Blog of New York Times magazine, a short text from James Estrin, talking about VII agency and my website.

- And there is another link about La Gacilly festival taking place in France for 3 months (June-September). I have been selected to exhibit outdoor large format images.

- I got honorable mention at the NY Photo Festival, in the Editorial Photographic Series.

- From the "Travel Photographer", a write up on my multimedia "Pakistan Love Parade".

Voila for now, off...

Tasteless crops.

Please try and enjoy the few tasteless background images on my current homepage.

This one is from Tajikistan, Dushanbe - they were shooting a music video and the model took off her shoe to get her feet in the nearby lake.

This is a funny one: a russian fisherman fishing in a hole on frozen Baikal. It's winter, and in Siberia it means it's probably -20C. I was nicely zipped in my dawn jacket and these guys were heated from inside, bare chested on the vodka: bare chested! This is a couple of other one from that lot.



Tajik fashion - always interesting to see what defines beauty in other faraway lands. Real Tajik beauty must sport unified eyebrows and golden teeth. I guess it's an acquired taste.

In China, trying on the hippopotamus at "Windows of the world" attraction park in Shenzhen.

Last one is a detail from a Mongolian wrestler getting ready to enter the ring.

Of rivers and drugs - Tajikistan/Afghanistan border

So I have been here in Khorog, capital of the Tajik Pamir, since about 10 days. I am looking around for images. It's always tough to try to do a story on a place that most people know nothing or so little about. You can do the "general" piece (and your head spins) or you can try to find something in particular that will allow the viewer to understand a lot about all the other issues that the country faces. That can be stronger. I am slowly narrowing it down.

Now, a small brief on some lovable subject: Geography. Khorog is RIGHT on the border with Afghanistan. If you have a good throw, you can land a small rock in Afghanistan, right over the Panj river, as it is known here. Up stream, it is the Ishkashim river, higher up again it splits into the Pamir and Wakhan River. Lower, past Khorog, you might have heard of its name: the Amu Daria, or the Oxus as the Greek called it - the greatest river of Central Asia. Oxus probably comes from the Turkish name Ak Su, the "White river".
In 2004, during my first sniff around in Tajikistan, I went with my writer friend John Bonaccolta up the Panj, to its source: the lake Zorkul.
At this stage, it's important to mention that most of the opium and heroin you find in the West comes from Afghanistan. And to make its way to Europe, a great portion of this drug passes over the Panj river into Tajikistan, making its way to Dushanbe (where the war lords drive their expensive BMW down the Rudaki avenue), hops on the train: direction Moscow.

Well, driving and then trekking beside the Panj to the Zorkul lake, it was always a bit disconcerting to look on the other side of the river and realize it was another country. Towards the end, near the outflow of the Zorkul lake, I couldn't help but hop on some gravel in the middle of the Panj (which, at this stage, was only approx. 4m wide). I was in no mans land, waving at some Afghani yak herder, looking at my friend John still in Tajikistan, few meters away from me. Although the last watch tower was maybe 20/30km behind us, I didn't linger. I had heard many scary stories about the trigger happy Tajik guards.

It looked like this: on the right is Afghanistan, on the left is Tajikistan.


In 2008, I was again briefly in Tajikistan, en route to the Wakhan corridor in winter to shoot my story "Forgotten". I already noticed that the KGB guys were a bit more laid back. And the russian members of the Tajik army were gone back in 2005 (these were the not so funny ones). The policemen even laughed at my intentions "We know you can't be a photographer, you are a dealer, like they all are! We shall defrost you in spring". That was Daulat, the nice KGB guy in Ishkashim, on the Tajik-Afghan border bridge.

Now: 2009: I feel more comfortable around these poor fellows. I say poor because they make peanuts. They are paid about 20$ a month. And they are here to try and avoid all the heroin and opium to cross into Tajikistan and makes its way to Europe. Fact is, from having driven and walked along the Panj for 800Km, it would just be too easy to sneak anything across. And with border guards making peanuts, it would again be probably too easy to hand them over a fat check and drive my lorry loaded with any goodies across the border.

Here in Khorog, some of them look like this, and their means of communication.





Ben voila... I will stop that babble. With so little money on both side of the border and extraordinary geographical challenges, I am yet not sure what the solution is to this illegal trade that destroys so many lives (I can witness it daily in Khorog). Grow apricots instead of poppy fields in Afghanistan? I don't think so... Commercialize opium via agreements with the pharmaceutical world, under strict supervision? mmm, maybe?

9 melancholic windows at my doorstep

I have shot a lot since we arrived in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. We are "stuck" here- trying to make our way to the Pamir mountains where we should be based for 2 months. I find this place very inspiring.
I will spare you the details and struggles of trying to get here - you can read the full download here.
It's just raining heavily - so much so that we couldn't get out of our apartment, there was a river (yes: river!) flowing in front of our door and flooding the entrance hall. Apparently it was on BBC and CNN. Bored home, I finally waded (shoes off, rolled up pants, watch for the holes in the street etc) my way to the bus stop 20m away and took some pictures of the windows passing by.

A BIT OF EXPLORISTAN

Greetings from Dushanbe. After a fiery start I fell behind on the blog front - sorry about that. Few things happened:

- I left Hong Kong mid-april and I will be on the road for 3 months! Finally arrived in Tajikistan. There is a Stan at the end, but do not fear this one, it's fairly tame. Last week, on my way here, I was on assignment in South India, in Karnataka.

- other problem is that I have been struggling to understand how Wordpress (my blog hoster) works! It is definitely NOT a simple blog tool, it's more of a tool to design website - to solve simple issued, I was confronted with insane phrases such as "When I instantiate this twice into two separate object variables, the second just overwrites the first!". Damn.... and I am French remember. So I ended up dumping Wordpress in the end and started using Blogger which is for dummies = good for me.

- Finally, I have been using every spare minute to finish my long multimedia piece on the Afghan Pamir (an on-going project since the last 5 months). It's definitely getting there. It will be more of a short documentary, probably + - 25 mn. So I have been sorting through yak heavy breathing sound issues and some lame Voice Overs. But we are getting there.


I will bring up the big word for this new blog: EXPLORATION.

" Kharab Bakri or a Bad goat in the Karakoram. "

To kick start the engine, here is a FANTASTIC quote taken from Willi Rickmer Rickmers's autobiography, the last non-russian explorer in the Pamir (one of the mountain range west of the Himalayas): "I was impressed above all by things massive and superlative. In this way I became a mountaineer. I was searcing for the untouched, the unsung. And so I became an explorer. Mountains are the most monumental of sculptures, and their counterpart was the desert, the most monumental etching. And so I became attached to Turkestan, where mountains and deserts are inseparably linked."
Turkestan? well, that's where I shot a lot of my stories and that's where I am right now - Tajikistan is a beautiful part of it.

Anyway: Flash back to 1999 - let me pull a picture, see below, we were based here 13 months:


that's Skardu, in Baltistan province, North Pakistan, some kilometers south of K2. Since 1999, year of my first discovery of North Pakistan, I have done my share of long treks - some classics but some unknown passes as well and a virgin peak.

Over the years, I think I walked over 2500 km in the Karakoram, Himalaya, Hindukush and Pamir range - mostly in North Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. I love trekking in remote areas. I am just sharing my background. I know there are people that have gained more trekking experience in these parts, and this is a good thing, because these places, to be really understood, need to approached on foot as much as possible.

These days, if you got time on your hands, it's fairly easy to find an unclimbed 6000m peak - easy at least in the Karakoram, Hindukush or Pamir regions - but finding an uncrossed pass is another story. Personally, I have always found that trekking back the same way you went was a joy-killer. Climbing peaks (as it often involves retracing your steps), has so far not ben my favorite. I always found that going over a high pass to try and establish a new itinerary between 2 valleys is much, much more exciting.

Chapursan Valley, Afghan-Pakistan border, end of September 2002.
Ghulam Ali was a good Wakhi man from the Chapursan valley, in Pakistan. I had met him several times between 2000 and 2003 while working on a story on the Kyrgyz yak traders. He had been up to a pass previously uncrossed and had to turn back himself because of bad weather. It's difficult to know for 100% that a pass has never been crossed - it could have been 200 years ago. Few factors can help to determine this:
- if there is no trail whatsoever leading to it, that's a good start
- if it doesn't have a name
- if the elders assure you it was never crossed
- if it makes no sense to go up this way (for example, there might be an easy nearby pass that links these 2 valleys you are trying to link)
- if it's technically difficult
-if the valleys you are starting from and ending at are sparsely and/or recently populated, these would reduce the likelihood of this pass having ever been crossed
... there must be more factors, but truth is, you can never be sure 100%. What you can be almost sure of is that it is an "uncrossed pass in living memory".

In 2003, I came back with Mareile and try and hope to go over this unnamed, "uncrossed" pass. We prepared our little expedition in an afternoon, shopping for noodles and more noodles and picking up fuel for our cooker at the Sost bazaar, the entrance of the Chapursan river, on the Pakistan/China border. Staying at Alam Jan's house at the end of the Chapursan Valley, I soon found out Ghulam Ali was no more. He had died in a tractor accident few months earlier - falling to his death in the Chapursan river.
Alam Jan would come along with us - so we would be three. Three being my current maxed-out members for this kind of trip, where tension can easily rise because of the uncertainty of the itinerary. We knew Alam Jan well and so we left in "good spirit".
Followed a beautiful 5-day adventure in path finding, country hopping between Pakistan's Karakoram and Afghanistan's Pamir mountains.


On the third day we came across a mountain flank covered with shell fossils - a reminder of the Thesis Sea that once covered this region. Maybe a beach was up on that mountain pass above? Bended in half, we looked for ages for a fossiled fish, but had no such luck.
That same day, trying to make the right decision on wether we should go over that ridge or this ridge, I remember being duly impressed by Alam Jan's path finding abilities. Pointing to a scree high above in the distance (the lower part of it being obstructed by another mountain in front of us), and then to the moraine of the glacier to our right, he said "See, they have the same color, we should follow this glacier, it will bring us below the scree near our goal...". Simple and logical. Climbing up to the flat area of the upper reach of the glacier, we slept on the ice, blessed with clear sky but extremely cold temperature.


With no rope, we went on carefully the next day and followed the logical exit, the uncrossed pass in front of us, past a last snow ridge. Having no altimeter with us, we felt we were probably at + - 5500m. Little celebratory dance at the top of the pass. Walking steep down on the glacier, past ice sentinels, we all agreed that this pass should simply be named "Ghulam Ali pass". It still is to this day. And I am pretty sure no one has been up there again ever since. A smiling Alam Jan had some good words back then "It's good place for bad goats like you here no??...". I tend to agree!


This story and more was published in Geo France in Oct. 2003 under the title "Secret road through the Pamir".