About Pamir Knot
Read the mountains, understand the people…
Why read the mountains? Well, I am passionate about the outdoors because they deliver constant beauty and teachings. The more you learn to “read” the outdoors, the more excited and appreciative one becomes. Where to cross a river? How to increase your path finding capabilities in remote country? What are these tufts of hair in the bush? And what about these animal tracks? I enjoy sharing my knowledge and look forward to learn with you along the way.
Why understand the people? Through my work as well as on a personal level, I’ve been always drawn to fully immersing myself in the places I travel. The rough and isolated high altitude environment of the Western Himalayas has given birth to an incredibly pure and good-natured people. Above all, I am passionate about these people, so even though I am no linguist, I always try to learn their languages. I speak Urdu (Pakistani language), Wakhi (spoken in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan), Tajik and some Kyrgyz. I constantly strive to get close to people – literally – to understand better what and whom I am photographing.
It’s the beautiful and personal that I look for in this region and those are the aspects that I want to share with you.
My name is Matthieu Paley. I was born and grew up in Normandy, France. I spent lots of my childhood traveling all over Europe and North Africa in my parent’s camping car. This conditioned me to leave for Asia at age 23. Since then I have lived, studied and worked in New York, Munich, Skardu and Gilgit (North Pakistan), Khorog (Tajikistan) and Bangkok. In 2002 I set my base camp in Shek-O, a small, relaxed fishing village near Hong Kong.
In over 10 years of guiding and working on my photo projects, I have spent over four years living in the Karakoram, Hindukush and Pamir region and trekked approximately 2500km at the crossroads of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Western China. I have probably done close to 10000km of jeep travels and about 400km of donkey and horse travels. I own two donkeys that I leave with friends in Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains: Clementine and Donkey Gi. Clementine got recently traded for a baby yak and trekked over into Afghanistan’s Pamir mountains…
