It was Tuesday morning, and Usama Sharif, who is 20 but still a 10th grader, shouldered his backpack, left his mud-brick home in a mountainside village in northwest Pakistan and walked down a dirt path to the cable car that would take him across the deep mountain valley to his school, his father said.
For years, the cable car had offered a lifeline to the otherwise isolated village, Pashto, deep in the mountains of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, easing an otherwise arduous journey for students to attend school or for sick members of the community to reach a hospital.