RICHARD WILLIAMSON Nature Trails November 11

Not just the Somme, and the Battle of Britain among the many, but the very recent dead of the Afghanistan campaign.

I would like briefly to look at that distant country from another viewpoint too, for parts of it are of great beauty.

Forty years ago I was lucky enough to travel into its far extremities between the occupations by Russian, then by Coalition forces.

I was on a wildlife mission for the BBC. The chance of anyone looking at Afghanistan through binoculars instead of telescopic sights in the near future are extreme indeed.

Helmand Province and Kabul and the deserts to the Pakistan borders are well-known to us from TV pictures.

It is barren-looking country with low hills and small mountains of extreme heat and little wildlife or beauty.

But travel north-east beyond the Hindu Kush and into the Wakhan Corridor of the Pamir Mountains and everything changes.

The Corridor was created more than a century ago as a barrier between Russia and the Indian continent by we Britons. We held the land at huge cost as a safe zone, from the mountain tribes who have changed little to this day.

It is a perilous place and few Westerners have been there in the past century. Snow-capped mountains stretch on every side. 
This is the home of the snow leopard and the grizzly bear.

I saw many signs of both – in fact, one of our month-long night shelters was in the cave occupied in winter by a grizzly. Tracks of snow leopards were seen often at our altitude of 16,000ft and above.

Pied kingfishers hunted the pale blue waters of the mountain rivers. I followed the Oxus to its source, seeing woodcock on the lakesides close to the Chinese and Russian borders.

One day I watched chevrons of cranes high overhead, migrating south to India for the winter followed by chevrons of bar-headed geese leaving the high Tibetan plateaux for the low meadows of the Indus.

Whichever way I looked into the sky, the complete dome of blue was speckled with birds of prey.

Lammergeir vultures and golden eagles spent time around my camp, hoping for titbits. Peregrines, kestrels, kites, buzzards were among the others. Scores of them. Ibex clashed half a mile above on the mountain walls.

Marco Polo sheep, the rams as big as New Forest ponies, grazed the high passes where sedge meadows grew. Many moths and butterflies went unidentified.

Kirghiz tribes living in yurts made me welcome with drinks of yak yoghurt and goat cheese. It was like a paradise, except for the cold. My thermometer never registered.

The mountains there had never been climbed. I wonder if it is still all in place, this land on the roof of the world.

One day, perhaps, it might be seen by Western eyes. But for the present we just have to hope this beautiful country can come back to sanity.