The route to the lapis mines in the Kokcha Valley is long, tortuous, and dangerous. From Feysbad, capital of Afghanistan’s northeast province of Badakhshan, a poor road stretches southward through tiny hamlets of mud-walled huts standing on uneven ground wracked by the earthquake of 1832. After motoring as far as Hazarat-Said, the traveler must spend another full day on horseback before reaching Kokcha Valley. The small Kokcha River is the eastern tributary of the River Oxus which Marco Polo traversed and wrote: “There is a mountain in that region where the finest azure [lapis lazuli] in the world is found. It appears in veins like silver streaks.”The lapis is mined on the steep sides of a long narrow defile sometimes only 200 meters wide and backed by jagged peaks that rise above 6000 meters. Sparsely populated and covered with snow for much of the year the barren region is inhabited by wild hogs and wolves. The summer sun is scorching, but temperatures drop below freezing at night. British Army Lieutenant John Wood reached the lapis mines for the East India Company in 1837, and wrote in his Journey to the Source of the River Oxus, “If you do not wish to die, avoid the Valley of Kokcha.”

Darreh-Zu, one of the oldest mines along the Kokcha, is now closed and presumably exhausted. The nearby and relatively new Sar-e-Sang mine currently yields substantial amounts of good quality gem material and has produced rare 5-centimeter lazurite crystals. The largest found thus far, a well formed dodecahedron imbedded in calcite, was collected in 1964 by Pierre Bariand, mineral collection curator at The Sorbonne.

Lazurite gem deposits occur in white and black marbles hundreds of meters thick. The gem veins, seldom exceeding 10 meters in length, lie in snow-white calcite.