Afghanistan

Afghanistan is crossed diagonally by the Hindu Kush, a range that separates the basins of Central Asia from those of the Indian Ocean and that shapes its entire climate. To the northeast, the narrow Wakhan corridor runs in between the Pamir and the Karakoram as far as the Chinese border, with high plateaux above four thousand metres where Marco Polo argali and ibex graze and where snow leopards and wolves hunt. In the centre, the Hazarajat highlands hold Band-e-Amir, a chain of six deep blue lakes separated by natural travertine dams that grow of their own accord as the water deposits carbonate. The south and the west are desert, with the Sistan depression and its seasonal wetlands, a historic refuge for migratory birds travelling between Siberia and India.