From his high position at the top of a cliff, Hamal watched the scene that opened in front of him. In his native Afghanistan he had acquired a taste for mountainous landscapes crowned with eternally snow-capped peaks. A wide and magnificent valley spread out before him, and there, in the background, was a glimpse of a blue river that seemed to emerge from the mountain. From the height of the cliff, the trail descended about one thousand feet in altitude on a rather steep slope and approached the river. The Afghan looked at the caravan of llamas that despite their fatigue seemed to smell the nearby water source.
Once again he smiled and gave a satisfied sigh, indeed compared to his childhood and youth in Afghanistan, first during the bitter war against the Russians in which almost all his
