Lecturer receives grant to visit remote areas of Afghanistan

In July and August 2004, UCSC language studies lecturer John Mock and his wife, Kimberly O'Neil, traversed the length of Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor to the source of the Oxus River near the western base of the Wakhjir Pass. The team then crossed the 5,300 mile Dilisang Pass to Misgar in the upper Hunza Valley of Pakistan's Northern Areas, a 300-mile journey, half of which was on foot.

The trip was funded by a $7,385 Shipton-Tilman grant that Mock received from W. L. Gore & Associates.

Famously remote and starkly beautiful, the Wakhan is known in Persian as the "roof of the world." Mock and O'Neil used their connections and reputation as experts of the region to visit this renowned high-mountain area that has been inaccessible to Westerners since the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. They observed the condition of people living in Wakhan and the impact that years of war has had on their lives, the environment, and endangered wildlife.

Mock and O'Neil are the first to obtain permission from the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan to visit the area and cross the high-mountain border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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