Walking across the world—if you happen to be a man, and particularly if your route winds through conservative rural societies—can be a chronically masculine experience.
Over the past four and a half years, while covering nearly 6,000 miles on foot through three subcontinents on the Out of Eden Walk, I have struggled to recruit women guides along my trail.
Twenty-four of my local walking partners so far have been male: a colorful band of brothers that has included Ethiopian camel nomads and a retired Saudi special forces general, a Palestinian photographer and a cross-dressing Israeli singer, a Georgian high school student and a blacklisted Kazakh divorce judge. By contrast just seven women have joined my global storytelling trek out of Africa. Almost all were visiting friends or fellow journalists. And most have walked along for relatively short lengths of time. True, my route has spanned societies where the sexes don’t often mingle causally. But a global fact remains: At the launch of the 21st century, whether threading the busy sidewalks of the Arab world, or plodding the frozen paths of remote Christian Orthodox villages in the Caucasus, we still live, by and large, in a deeply gender-divided planet.
Shoxaydarova, ready for a hard day's walking in the rugged Pamirs of Tajikistan.
Paul Salopek
So it’s been a welcome surprise in the high cold Pamir range of Tajikistan, easily the most rugged and wild landscape I’ve traversed to date, to work with tough women who think nothing of pounding out 25 miles a day—not in hiking boots but in sandals.
Furough Shakarmamadova and Safina Shoxaydarova, both 23, are lifelong friends and pioneers.
They are among the first generation of trained female hiking guides in their isolated community of Shia Muslim mountaineers called Pamiris.
Shakarmamadova—exuberant, wisecracking, a reader of literature—met me at a remote Tajikistan border post at 15,000 feet. Her tent was partially collapsed. Not from the blowing gale. But because the local soldiers, insisting on helping this stripling woman, had accidentally broken it. Shakarmamadova had made resourceful repairs with a hank of wire. She kept her expenses on an Excel spreadsheet.
Shoxaydarova is quieter and carefully plots water holes and springs on her topographical maps. She is tireless. My lasting image of Safina is of her tilting into the wind under the weight of an enormous pack, often far ahead, amid an alpine wilderness of Marco Polo sheep, serrated peaks and icy torrents.
“Hey, I’ve got a wedding soon,” she shot back, when I teased her about her addiction to heavy doses of sunblock.
And she did.
Shoxaydarova, ready for a hard day's walking in the rugged Pamirs of Tajikistan.
Paul Salopek
So it’s been a welcome surprise in the high cold Pamir range of Tajikistan, easily the most rugged and wild landscape I’ve traversed to date, to work with tough women who think nothing of pounding out 25 miles a day—not in hiking boots but in sandals.
Furough Shakarmamadova and Safina Shoxaydarova, both 23, are lifelong friends and pioneers.
They are among the first generation of trained female hiking guides in their isolated community of Shia Muslim mountaineers called Pamiris.
Shakarmamadova—exuberant, wisecracking, a reader of literature—met me at a remote Tajikistan border post at 15,000 feet. Her tent was partially collapsed. Not from the blowing gale. But because the local soldiers, insisting on helping this stripling woman, had accidentally broken it. Shakarmamadova had made resourceful repairs with a hank of wire. She kept her expenses on an Excel spreadsheet.
Shoxaydarova is quieter and carefully plots water holes and springs on her topographical maps. She is tireless. My lasting image of Safina is of her tilting into the wind under the weight of an enormous pack, often far ahead, amid an alpine wilderness of Marco Polo sheep, serrated peaks and icy torrents.
“Hey, I’ve got a wedding soon,” she shot back, when I teased her about her addiction to heavy doses of sunblock.
And she did.
Shoxaydarova's wedding involves an elaborate veiling process.
Paul Salopek
After trekking 250 miles across the “roof the world,” a towering Central Asian range that had stopped Russian armies, Shoxaydarova married in the Pamiri mountain town of Khorog. Welts from scores of mosquito bites had faded by then. She wobbled in red spike heels under a new load: embroidered veils that were removed one at a time for her husband’s family. To the thump of sheepskin drums, I danced with her friend Shakarmamadova’s mother. (Shakarmamadova was away in neighboring Pakistan, volunteering to collect trash on K-2, the second highest mountain in the world.)
If these women are extraordinary, it’s partly because Pamiri culture is special.
They are followers of Ismailism, a tolerant branch of Islam led by the 49th Agha Khan, a spiritual and temporal leader descended from the Prophet Mohammed. (The current imam, His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan, is a Harvard graduate.) Ismailis are scattered across more than 25 countries. They emphasize self-reliance, community service, and political neutrality. More than most Muslim sects, they promote gender equality: A recent imam advised families that if they could only educate just one child, let it be a girl. In Tajikistan, the minority Ismailis are often blue-eyed and speak languages rooted in ancient eastern Iran. When Alexander the Great marched through, he married his only wife, Roxanne, here.
The last I saw of Shoxaydarova she was, as usual, walking.
Draped in traditional finery, she paraded with her husband out of her grandfather’s house in Khorog to pounding dance music, followed by relatives carrying a bow-wrapped wedding bed. She and Shakarmamadova plan to open the first woman-owned trekking company in Tajikistan.
Video by Paul Salopek
“I am really feeling pleased to join you for the trip we made,” she emailed me weeks later, after I had set out for Afghanistan with a new male guide. “It was really making me feel more strong and confident.”
This was polite nonsense.
