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Concealed among the arid western hillocks of the Hindu Kush, where precipitation is periodic and water is insufficient, is a stripe of cool, shining lakes. They nestle along Afghanistan's prime river - Band-e Amir, at an altitude of just under 9700ft (2900m) and are close to the village of Bamian. Those who traverse this way come upon a backdrop of incredible beauty.
Walled in by violet-tinged ridges of clay and limestone, the lakes are sprinkled along an 8-mile (12km) expanse of river. From the individual lake, the river gurgles over an untouched rock dam, where it creates a twisting latticework of rivulets and marshy tableland with mosses, willows, grass and wet plants running down to the next take shore.
The waterbodies differ in colours from bluish-green to milky white, resonant blue and opaque green, depending on the depth of the lake, the intensity of sunlight and the types and number of algae surviving in the water. They vary in length from just 270 ft (80m) to more than 3.5 miles (5.2km).
At the peak of summer, noontime temperatures here shoot up to 35 C (95F), and animals - such as striped hyenas - search for shade. But the lakes are waters that have melted from cliff snows, and give out an icy chill. It is, especially during the summer that the untouched natural rock dams around these beautiful lakes, some more elevated than a three-storey house, form stalactites from the inorganic solids of the surrounding rocks.
These minerals, especially calcium carbonate, are altogether responsible for the presence of the lakes. When the icy crystals melt, it seeps through the marl and limestone and liquefies some of their mineral range, which is then moved into the river.
Gleaming Rock Formed By the Flowing Water
When the minerals from the surrounding rocks come into contact with algae or wet plants, chemical reactions compel some of it to be ensconced as layers of deposition on the lake bed. Over the years this solidified and crystallised to form permeable gravel known as travertine. It is the travertine layer that glimmers in the daylight at the water's surface and its glimmering reflections from the lake floor contribute to the pulsations in watercolour.
Built of permeable gravel over the millenniums that have made the river to create a chain of lakes. But the Afghan lore offers another explanation. It describes how the son-in-law of the prophet Mohammed, Ali, was enraged with a local despot who tried to hold him captive in the Valley. In his fury, he forced a landslide that intercepted the river and formed the lake now called Dam of Wrath (Band-e Habitat). There is an element of truth in the myth, for some of the natural rock dams overlay debris from ancient landslides.
