Personal Info

Ali Awan


My parents are from Pakistan, more specifically from the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. We are Pushto speaking people, the same language as that of Afghanistan. Unfortunately my parents did not teach me this beautiful language, but am content with at least knowing the national language of Pakistan which is Urdu. All thanks to my mom. I say this because I was born and grew up in London, England. Despite this fact, my mother taught both my sister and I how to speak, and at a very elementary level read and write Urdu. Then, when I was seven we moved to Panama, where I picked up Spanish (hence my Spanish minor), and finally we moved to the U.S. in 1984.

The Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) is in my opinion one of the most beautiful regions of Pakistan as the north part of this province is a kind of meeting place of some of the biggest and impregnable mountain ranges of the world: Hindu Kush, Pamirs, and of course the Himalaya. We argue that the highest peak in the world is K2 (the picture on this page). There was a recalculation done recently and it turns out that it is higher than Mt. Everest. Well, I have been in love with the landscape of this region, and was lucky enough to visit, in the summer of 1994, an area which is sort of the foothills of Himalayan mountains, what isknown as the Kaghan Valley. We then trekked up to the beautiful lake Saiful Muluk.



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