When suicide bombers and gunmen massacred people thronging Kabul's airport, they also cut off an escape route Ali Rezaie hoped to take to seek a new life abroad, away from the Taliban and their suspicions of middle-class and with training who worked with foreigners in Afghanistan.

Amid the chaos, Rezaie couldn't make it to the airport as flight after flight left without him. The 27-year-old was left with no choice but to pursue his future on his own. Like many Afghans, he chose another way out, embarking on a grueling journey thousands of miles to Europe, including long stretches on foot.

More than three months later, Rezaie's odyssey through five countries has taken him high in the Alps between France and Italy, where he fights his way through knee-deep snow to avoid border guards, with a journalist of The Associated Press behind.

The Afghan exodus that some feared could flood Europe with migrants after the Taliban took power has failed to materialize. And among the rugged alpine crags dotted with glittering icebergs, it soon becomes clear why: Only the toughest, most motivated and most resourceful exiles make it this far.

Ahead of Rezaie, in the snowy landscape, is the French border. It is not marked, but it is guarded at all hours by policemen with thermal binoculars. Rezaie's partner, another Afghan who bears the scars of a suicide attack that convinced him to leave, has already tried unsuccessfully to reach France by this winter route.

So men tread carefully. They stop to listen in the icy silence, to check a map on Rezaie's cell phone before the cold drains its battery, and to eat some jam-filled croissants they bought in the Italian border town of Claviere. If they are discovered by French guards patrolling the border on foot, with snowmobiles or in pickup trucks, they will be forced to return to Italy.

The Taliban's takeover and the rapid collapse of the Afghan economy has caused people to cross illegally into neighboring Iran, often the first step on the path for Afghans like Rezaie who want to reach the European Union.

Afghans are on track to overtake Syrians as the largest group of asylum seekers in Europe in 2021. Internal EU reports on migration trends indicate that more than 80,000 Afghans applied for asylum as of November. That's a 96% increase from the previous year, fueled in part by evacuations from Kabul airport.

Rezaie is from Herat, in western Afghanistan. He says that he traveled to Kabul to try to catch a flight, but changed his mind after the attack in the last days of the air evacuation. He believes that if he had stayed in Afghanistan, he could have been killed because he worked with foreign humanitarian groups.

So he liquidated his savings, he borrowed money and left behind his printing shop, his friends and his comfortable life.

He first traveled to Iran and Turkey, took a ship and walked for 25 days to Greece. Then came Italy and the French border.

Rezaie assumes that compared to everything that has happened, crossing the border will be easy. But it's even easier for European tourists whom he suddenly finds on a ski tour that intersects with his mountain route. They pass quickly, without paying attention to him or worrying about the police patrols.

Rezaie feels exposed on the groomed ski slope, struck by the contrast between the skiers' carefree joy and their urge to return to the camouflage offered by the trees.

"Some come down happy," he says, breathing in the mountain air. "Others go up sad."

Finding their way to the heart of Europe, Rezaie and other migrants offer hope to those who will surely come after. His knowledge of the obstacles, his contacts and his travel tips will be passed back to Afghanistan. Migrants attempting the crossing share cell phone maps with GPS directions leading the way.

Rezaie tries to reach the French fortified town of Briançon. Sayed and Mortaza, cousins ​​and both 16 years old, passed through Briançon a few hours earlier. They too fled in the days after Kabul fell and crossed through Iran to Turkey. From there, smugglers took them on an overcrowded ship to Italy, a brutal six-day journey that left them so weak they could not stand.

They were discovered at the French border, but allowed to continue because they were minors. Seven adult Afghans they crossed with were sent back.

The Taliban takeover scattered Sayed's family. His father and his older brother worked as police officers. They have fled, and Sayed believes they are hiding in Pakistan. Without their wages, Sayed and his mother had no income, so they too left. She stayed with a sister in Iran. He tries to get to Germany.

"Maybe Dortmund, because I like the Dortmund soccer club," he said. "We just want to escape."

Others who left long before the Taliban took over the country say they no longer have any hope of returning.

"It's over for us, for anyone who is in Europe," said Abdul Almazai, 26, who left Afghanistan as a teenager. He and eight other Afghans had been sent back at the French border, and he planned to try again.

"We've crossed a lot of countries," he said. "I have to carve out my future."

Aid workers fear that Afghans more accustomed to the mountains and the dangers of winter are taking more dangerous routes through the snow than migrants from warmer climates.

“They are confident, and sometimes being confident doesn't help,” said Luca Guglielmetto, a volunteer at a shelter on the Italian side who equips migrants with warm clothing and boots for the crossing.

As night falls, Rezaie's cell phone battery dies. He and his partner continue on through the snow.

Few people get it on the first try. Rezaie accomplished that feat, and the next day he beamed with pride as he ate breakfast at a migrant shelter in Briançon.

He sent a video of himself walking through the snow to his mother and his brother in Iran.

His target now is Germany. But he hopes to return home one day.

“I had a car. I had a job, job,” he said. "He had a good life."