The communities that have inhabited this peak girt landscape down the centuries developed an elaborate system of transportation routes which allowed their villages to communicate both among themselves and with the nearest urban centres. Travel, which took place on foot or using animals, took many hours, even days, and was largely determined by weather conditions and by the season, since the footpaths were covered in snow in the winter and the villages cut off. The network is admirably organized and successfully minimizes the time spent travelling while limiting the risks posed by wild animals and rock slides and exploiting the terrain and space to the best advantage to allow the least number of paths to serve the maximum number of villages. This was how the communities of the Aoos valley employed their unique knowledge of their land and environment, its limitations and affordances, to develop a culture of communication.
Travelling these local routes from soaring peaks to riverside passes, through valleys, forests and stone-built villages, the paths of craftsmen, muleteers, pedlars and shepherds would cross. Each bearing with them their crafts and goods, their livestock and worldly goods, ideas and traditions, they would stop to rest at the hans, the little wayside inns with their chambers and their stables. There, they would exchange experiences, stories and impressions from their travels.
To a large extent, the area owes its current character to those paths and cobbles which allowed this mountain folk to shrug off the inwardness that isolation can bring.