By: Dara Sborea

This week, we are exploring journalist Paul Salopek’s 24,000 mile journey, titled “Out of Eden Walk.” The idea was to follow the path out of Africa to other lands, just as our earliest ancestors did tens of thousands of years ago.

Salopek wanted to slow down so we can rediscover our world, on foot. His idea was to highlight the people and events along this journey that wouldn’t normally make the news. In this post, I will discuss three of destinations from the walk, but I highly suggest you take a look at Salopek’s journey for yourself.

Salopek begins where humankind began, in Africa. In the Great Rift Valley, which Salopek describes as an inhabited wilderness, he encounters Ahmed Alema Hessan, a leader of a clan of the Afar people. Hessan hasn’t driven camels in 30 years, but in this region, there is plenty of help as Salopek and Hessan walk and talk. Salopek describes the people who come and go along this part of the route as engaging in a public conversation, just to vanish into the horizon once their part is done.

For a significant part of Salopek’s journey, he travels along the Silk Road, which was a network of trade routes that connected China and the Far East with the Middle East and Europe.

Horses were first domesticated in Kazakhstan, which means the first cowboys were there too. Salopek decides to look for a horse here to use as a pack animal. He is committed to completing his journey on foot, or by boat when required. As it turns out, while Kazakhstan’s citizens cling to their heritage with horses, few have seen or touched a live horse. Salopek does manage to find a horse breeder, and a horse is eventually delivered to him, but it’s likely not the one Salopek chose.

Unfortunately, Salopek’s trek was sidelined for a significant amount of time because of the Covid-19 pandemic. He has, however, resumed his journey and as of earlier this month (November 2021), he was in China’s biodiversity hotspot situated in the Gaoligong Mountains, near China’s border with Burma. To give you an idea of the massive biodiversity of the area, there are about 5,000 species of plants, 700 species of animals, and 1690 different insects! Several new plant species are discovered in the area each year. Salopek reminds us that while we were all focused on the climate change summit in Glasgow, the United Nations 15th biodiversity conference was held in China this year, and it was equally as important as the climate change summit.