evidence: The valleys are located in a strange, pincer-shaped appendage of land jutting from the northeast corner of Afghanistan. This strip, often referred to as the Wakhan corridor, was a result of the 19th century’s so-called Great Game, when the British and Russian Empires fought for influence in Central Asia. The two powers created it, through a series of treaties between 1873 and 1895, as a buffer zone—a sort of geographical shock absorber—preventing tsarist Russia from touching British India. In previous centuries the area was part of the Silk Road connecting China and points west, the route of armies and explorers and missionaries. Marco Polo passed through in the late 1200s. [...] The horizon, everywhere you look, is halted by towering chiseled peaks. Here, on the roof of the world, several of Asia’s highest ranges meet—the Hindu Kush, the Karakoram, the Kunlun—a spot so tangled with mountains it’s known as the Pamir Knot. The Wakhan corridor is also the birthplace of rivers flowing both east and west, including the Amu Darya, or "mother river," one of the main waterways of Central Asia.