Panorama Photo

«Perhaps it is the flow of the river out of emptiness, like something incarnate, time-bearing, at once peaceful and rather terrible, which tightens my stomach. Or maybe it is the idea of an anthropomorphic Asia: Asia with a heart, a womb, a memory. (An Arab once told me that the English, having no hearts, were always searching for them elsewhere.) I stand surprised in the clear light, the silence. The land looks irreducible, like bone. I stare for long minutes, confused, unable to leave. Asia: it has consumed my adult life»

This paragraph by the great travel-writer Colin Thubron occupied my mind when I was shooting this and other panoramas of the Shyokh valley. Let it be said, for the sake of precision, that the above lines do not refer to this river, nor to any other river in the vicinity - the one closest to the Shyokh being the Indus. Indeed, the waters involved are those that I described in my N.9762: actually, Thubron was a bit lower down in the Yenisey valley - this explains why the quotation comes from the book "In Siberia".
Moreover, the idea to create a second "Roads of Asia", after N.13039, came to me yesterday, while I was listening once more to Bach's cantata "Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen"... The connection of the Shyokh with the idea of ancient caravans comes perhaps from the (authentic) Bactrian camels that can be seen lower down in the valley, as explained in my Nubra panorama N.18402.
So, there are indeed composite and incoherent suggestions behind this work, but I hope that it can be of interest nevertheless.
Who wonders where the traffic of the Himalaya (see N.20916) has gone, may obtain a clear answer from goo.gl/0wE3Yg and surrounding stuff.