In January 2013, Paul Salopek embarked on what was purported to be a 7-year, 33,800km trek around the world, but has not yet reached half.
The journey, which he calls Out of Eden Walk, to follow in the footsteps of humanity, when the first humans left Africa to begin exploring the world several millennia ago.
The Salopek Way would take him from Ethiopia to Argentina, war-torn West Asia, the Silk Road, the Indian subcontinent (which he left just over a year ago, for Myanmar), through China and Siberia, and along the west coast.North and South America, to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.
Salopek is a journalist who goes from one news story to another, passing through them or flying towards them, in this age of tweets disguised as news and bait that attracts attention, practices slow journalism: telling stories with anthropological taste while still being current..
Salopek, 58, a Pulitzer Prize winner and member of National Geographic, has studied environmental biology and has served as a journalist since 1985.
He has reported for publications such as the Chicago Tribune and National Geographic, covering wars, the illegal arms trade, public aptitude issues and the effect of overpesca, among other topics.
The stories of the other people you know and the regions through which you cross the Walk Out of Eden can be discovered in online chapters.The 4 full chapters to date include Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank and Israel, called the Holy Lands, the place of birth.3 of the world’s toughest monotheists – and the “stans” of Central Asia, from Kazakhstan to Pakistan, under the name Silk Road.
Trapped in the pandemic after completing the Burmese stretch of his odyssey, Salopek waits in the small town of Putao, in the state of Kachin in northern Myanmar, to reopen the borders to enter China, but is in no hurry.
The concept of never walking without a break, because “you may never have kept it,” he says via Skype.
In fact, he made long stops elsewhere, due to geopolitical setbacks (three months in Haifa, Israel, for example), or adverse weather situations (nine months in Tbilisi, Georgia, while waiting for snow to melt in the mountains).
Instead of seeing these delays as obstacles, Salopek discovers productive tactics to occupy his time; in Myanmar, he ends the e-book he wrote earlier in what he describes as his “intercontinental walk.”
“It’s my life now,” he says cheerfully, “so whatever happens, delays and celebrations, side trips, it’s quite a component of the journey.”
Among other things, he discovered that the human brain, at least his, works best while maintaining a stable pace of about five km/h.This speed, he says, allows intelligent contemplation of the other people and communities he knows..
“However, walking still allows you to move,” he says. Never get stuck, or stay in a position that you lose sight of, or are too tired, or intellectually influenced.Helps keep your interest intact.
It is this interest that is helping to build its symbol of our planet.”Walking is a global framing device with serial acts, such as chapters in a book, chapters are called geography and history,” he says.
His offices, published in National Geographic’s Out of Eden Walk sub-site, cover a wide variety of topics, a deserted city he visited in Cyprus, for example, or when he discovered a classic paper manufacturer in Uzbekistan, and are accompanied by war-related stories..refugees and silk owers, classic healers and horse traffickers.
Slutk follows an immutable plan, locating a sleeping position where he stops for the day.
To make sure nothing is lost in translation, use local walking companions (interpreters, hiking guides, environmental activists, hounds and hounds) to help you not only with the language, but also to perceive lost prospects abroad.
Photographer John Stanmeyer flies in to sign up on his behalf once or twice a year, but other than that, he doesn’t have a team to travel with him or monitor his progress.
In India, where he spent about 18 months and traveled 4,000 km, he accompanied environmental photographer Arati Kumar-Rao, human rights journalist Priyanka Borpujari, journalist Prem Panicker and Indian river expert Siddharth Agarwal, among others.learned “art, writing, civil rights, tolerance and natural resistance.”
The hiking companions discovered their own rich and unforeseen pleasures: for Kumar-Rao, who traveled about 700 km with Salopek, first through Punjab and Rajasthan, it was that of the rare Dolphins of the Indo.
As a practitioner of slow journalism, who revisits places in other seasons and for many years, Kumar-Rao explains how to walk, rather than seeing landscapes from the moving cocoon of an air-conditioned vehicle, leaves the guest exposed and vulnerable.”We see, we listen, we feel, we feel. It’s like we’re starting over,” he says.
As for Panicker, he discovered his vision of India as a deranged homogeneous national entity.What he discovered instead was “millions of glass pieces in bright colors and other shapes glued in combination through the nation’s glue.”
Based on reports from the Indian chapter, called “Riverlands,” Salopek and his fellow walkers threw the highlights of India’s next water crisis.The water was not in his brain when he crossed the border from Pakistan to India, but the farmers he met and the stories he heard constantly pointed it in that direction.Or, as he himself says, the issue of water “kept coming to the surface; there were stories of water scarcity, of public fitness disorders due to pollution, of the discovery of fluoride in groundwater.In the spirit of the time of the country.
Compares the water crisis to the sinking of the climate; or are built regularly, hoping to explode.
“There is a huge and almost existential water crisis in India.And because it’s so big, confusing and intimidating, it’s largely ignored by global media,” she says.
Kumar-Rao said the march reaffirmed what he knew about “the astonishing alteration of nature’s rhythms and our accelerated disconnection with the earth.”
As he contemplates the looming crises, Salopek, like all of us, is facing a crisis that is already wreaking havoc; however, sitting in northern Myanmar, he says the coronavirus pandemic has shaken the speed of its intercontinental rise.
“Walking teaches patience,” he said. And I hope we get wiser out of the crisis.”
This article was first published in the South China Morning Post.