The ‘Out of Eden’ Walk

We don’t walk much these days. I mean, humans as a species. With the rise of modern transportation and our frenzied lifestyles, our sense of space and the time needed to cover vast distances has also been lost. Rahul Gandhi, in his Bharat Jodo Yatra managed to cover an average of 25kms over 4 months which translated to a mind boggling distance of 4000 kms. Like most commentators and followers of the Yatra, this feat caught my attention too and got me wondering about the difficulties of covering such distances over a sustained period. (Gandhi, had a well-oiled mechanism to support this feat of his)

Yesterday, I discovered Paul Salopek and his Out of Eden Walk thanks to his appearance on Conversations with Tyler! The Out of Eden Walk of Salopek is a 24,000 mile trek from the Horn of Africa to the southern tip of South America, tracing the migratory routes of our earlier ancestors. He’s completed a decade walking and is currently in China. 

The articles written by him gives us a fascinating peak into the complex world we inhabit. Glancing through some of the writings made me appreciate the role of migration a tad more. In the podcast, he speaks of his notes, his digital archives and the craft of being a slow-journalist in this hyper-connected news-hungry world.

All in all, a healthy reminder to step out of our homes, observe the world and appreciate humans who have always migrated as a species! As Salopek writes in this piece marking a decade of his project:

Mobility is humankind’s oldest and most powerful survival tool.