All material for this "Witness Online Documentary" was gathered in Central Asia in the summer of 1997 by Gary Matoso and Randall Koral. This is the fifth episode in a nine-part series.

There's an old Tajik legend about a hunter who makes a startling deathbed confession. He tells his wife he once discovered a lost city in the High Pamirs. "I walked for a very long time along a river," he says, "until I reached a fantastic town, where everyone wears white woolen clothing and has a lot of land, water, and livestock. They live in peace and have neither king, nor ministers, nor functionaries. They are governed only by a village elder. When it was time for me to leave, they gave me a little bag of pure, white salt, and I swore never to reveal their secret." Those were the hunter's last words and, as the story goes, the location of the lost city died with him.

Khorog could be that city. The 20,000 people who live here aren't prosperous, but Khorog does convey the impression of being "lost," and there's something fantastic about the place that leaves an indelible impression. "The sky is bluer there," insists Monica Whitlock, a BBC correspondent based in Dushanbe. "And the sheep look whiter." Khorog lies in southeastern Tajikistan, across the Piandj river from Afghanistan. Most travellers are likely to come from the north. This means they must first cross the "Roof of the World," the Pamirs, the world's highest mountain range. The trip is always difficult if not entirely out of the question. Planes from Dushanbe can take off only in ideal weather conditions; the flight path requires pilots to thread their way between (rather than over) the treacherous peaks. The highway from Dushanbe isn't much more reliable. It's badly in need of repair and becomes impassable during the winter months. Perhaps the main obstacle to travel along it in recent years has been frequent fierce fighting between government and opposition forces, and local bandits and warlords. The only other overland route into Khorog is the 728-kilometer stretch of asphalt beginning in Osh, in Kyrgystan, but this is equally susceptible to avalanches and mudslides. In November, one such avalanche killed at least 46 travellers, burying them under a 40-foot-deep blanket of snow.