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truly cut off. Hunza has always been a place of passage, though today it feels remote. Long before modern borders existed, this region sat along the ancient Silk Road, a network of routes that connected China, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, then further onto Persia and then Europe. Traders, monks, and armies moved through these valleys, leaving behind not just goods but ideas, languages, and beliefs.
You can still see traces of that movement if you know where to look.
A few days later, I found myself standing before what is known as the Sacred Rock of Hunza. It doesn’ t announce itself dramatically, there are no grand signs or fences, just a broad, weathered face of stone overlooking the valley. At first glance it appears unremarkable, but as your eyes adjust, the surface begins to reveal itself: carvings layered upon carvings, inscriptions overlapping across centuries, some depict animals and hunters, others inscriptions in scripts that predate modern languages of the region.
Among them are fragments of Brahmi script, left by Buddhist monks who once travelled this route when Buddhism was the dominant faith in the region. The characters are faint, worn by time and weather, but still discernible if you know what to look for.
I had been photographing a section of the rock, trying to make sense of a partially eroded inscription, when a group of middleaged men approached. They asked what I was looking at, and when I explained, they leaned in closer, studying the markings as though seeing them for the first time.
One of them asked if I could read it.
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