AFRICA
A SIA
Bay of
BengalArabian
SeaR
ed(^) S
ea
Med
. (^) Se
a
Black (^) Se
a Ca
aassp
iia
n
Se
a
Gulf of Aden
CYPRUS SYRIA
ISRAEL
UZB.
MYANMAR
(BURMA)
SAUDI
ARABIA
ETHIOPIA
DJIBOUTI
AZ
ER
.
INDIA
CHINA
KAZAKHSTAN
AF
GH
AN
ISTA
N
PAKI
STAN
GEORGIA
KYRG.
TAJ.
TURKE
Y
JORDAN
TAIWAN
Dec. 2013 Completed route
Petra
Aug. 2014
Gaziantep
July 2018
Jaipur
July 2016
Xiva (Khiva)
Nov. 2016
Margilon
Aug. 2020
Mandalay
Shanghai
May 2015
Side trip to
Nagorno-
Karabakh
June 2016
Zhyngghyldy
Start
Jan. 2013
Herto Bouri
500 km
500 mi
Countries
visited
Completed
ASIA
AFRICA
Planned
route
The COVID-19
pandemic and the
coup in Myanmar
upended Salopek’s
plans. He had to
fly to Shanghai to
prepare for the China
segment of his walk.
Nations tallies no fewer than 80 million of them.
Remember their meals.
In the mountains of Nagorno-Karabakh, I
knocked at a dilapidated apartment occupied
by Armenian refugees from Syria. “Spasek!” the
women hollered through the closed door. “Wait!”
They had spied me coming up the road. I heard
them frantically preparing a meal of cucum-
ber, salt, cheese, and stale flatbread. They kept
restocking my plate, a sheet of newspaper. They
refused to even sit down. Two suitcases held all
their worldly goods.
At a truck stop reeking with drunkards in
Djibouti, a table of shy Somali migrants invited
me to glass after tulip-shaped glass of red tea.
They were smugglers’ chattel en route to Ara-
bia. White, male, with a bankable passport, I
was surely the most privileged walker within
a thousand miles. Yet these men, who had left
comrades dead of thirst in the desert, spooned
my sugar for me as if I were the starveling.
back. A resource war was simmering between his
people and the Issa, ethnic Somalis moving up
from their own threadbare plains.
Movement is our oldest survival strategy.
Pastoralists navigate through cataclysms with
their feet. The Stone Age people I follow likely
did the same. They remind us: Carry your home,
like a prayer bead rubbed between thumb and
index finger. Don’t lift your feet unnecessarily.
Be ready to pivot.
WALKING THE 21ST CENTURY
DIVIDES HUMANS
INTO TWO TAXA.
The winners move on their asses, sitting in
machines. The rest travel atop their bones—they
walk. All along the global trail you meet many of
the latter category: the invisible ones. Refugees.
Outcasts. The displaced. The jobless, homeless,
and stateless. Forced migrants—the United
The world, step by step
Paul Salopek has walked some 11,000 miles since
2013, when he began following the footsteps of our
ancestors out of Africa and across the world to the
tip of South America. He’s continuing his trek through
China’s heartland, heading toward Siberia.
CHRISTINE FELLENZ, NGM STAFF. SOURCE: JEFF BLOSSOM, CENTER FOR GEOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 133