On the bridge of ABUYASSER II, radio and engines

Milestone 10

Aboard ABUYASSER II in the Red Sea, goat and sheep

Milestone 9

Jamal Osili, the Syrian chief engineer of ABUYASSER II, relaxes by listening to bird sounds. "He sat at his post at night playing songbird recordings over and over on his computer," Paul writes. "He said it reminded him of a better world."

Milestone 8

Sounds of the Red Sea mingled with the engines of ABUYASSER II, somewhere between Djibouti City and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Milestone 7

Midnight on the deck of ABUYASSER II, the lonely sound of wind raking a canvas tarp.

Milestone 5

Abdullah Ali Nejem, captain of the MV ABUYASSER II, talks on the ship radio.

Milestone 4

Cabin sounds on the ABUYASSER II: gentle rocking, and the sound of a highlighter rolling back and forth across Paul's writing desk.

Milestone 6

Milestone 3

After weeks in the desert, Edenwalk meets the Ethiopia-Djibouti highway.

Milestone 2

The sounds of Paul setting out on a seven-year journey: Day 1, Mile O, Herto Bouri, Ethiopia—our ancestors' point of departure.

Milestone 1

The sounds of Paul's caravan, recorded 01/25/13 at Yangudi Rassa National Park, Ethiopia, 10°33'12.9'' N, 40°21'30.5'' E. Read it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/25/camel-walking/

Dispatch: Camel Walking

The sounds of an Afar graveyard, recorded 01/29/13 at The Afar Triangle, Ethiopia, 10°7'39'' N, 40°30'59'' E. Read about it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/29/bones-atop-bones-walking-through-a-colossal-graveyard/

Dispatch: Bones Atop Bones

Afar tribesmen exchange news in Dagu, lingua franca of the Ethiopian herdsman. Recorded 02/03/13 in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia, 10°32'35'' N, 40°22'37'' E. Read about it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/03/bush-rss-feed/

Dispatch: Bush RSS feed

The sounds of a camel chewing his cud at the end of a long day. Recorded on 02/26/13 near Asaita, Ethiopia, 11°48'38" N, 41°24'38" E. Read about it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/26/trail-notes-camel-camaraderie/. Photo by John Stanmeyer

Dispatch: Camel Camaradarie

Paul reflects on parting with his trusted Afar guide and trail companions, and imagines the stories they will tell about the journey. Recorded on 03/15/13 near Howle, Ethiopia, 11°42'58" N, 41°48'8" E. Read about it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/15/goodbye-to-alema/

Dispatch: Goodbye to Alema

The sound of Paul's trail companions making a batch of palm wine. Recorded on 04/05/13 at Deka Valley, Djibouti, 11°32'12'' N, 42°21'24'' E. Read about it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/05/trail-notes-the-elixir/

Trail Note: The Elixir

Sound of the ceaseless oceanic wind from which there is no refuge, no relaxation, no peace, no rest. Recorded on 04/10/13 at Leita, Djibouti, 11°32'03" N, 42°28'04" E. Read about it here: http://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/10/noisiest-village-in-the-world/

Dispatch: Noisiest Village in the World

The sound of the world at Paul's 13th milestone, near Yanbu, Saudi Arabia.

Milestone 13: North of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia

The sound of the earth at Paul's 14th milestone, near Al Wajh, Saudi Arabia.

Milestone 14: Near Al Wajh, Saudi Arabia

Milestone 15: On the pilgrim trail from Cairo to Mecca

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 72 was recorded near Thickegyin, Myanmar.

Paul writes, "In a world so green it was hard to believe anything was wrong. Chlorophyll was everywhere. Nearly 12,000 plant species. A cosmos of leaves." 

Explore the full Milestone here: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/milestones/2020-07-milestone-72-absences#introduction

Milestone 72: Absences

The first "China Chat" with Paul Salopek (Out of Eden Walk), Edward Wong (Diplomatic Correspondent, The New York Times), Evan Osnos (Staff Writer, The New Yorker), Kaitlin Yarnall (Chief Storytelling Officer, National Geographic Society), Neysun Mahboubi (Research Scholar, The Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania), and Susan Jakes (Editor, ChinaFile at Asia Society). This conversation took place via Twitter Spaces on February 24, 2022.

China Chat with Paul Salopek

The sound of the desert at Milestone 16, 1500 miles into the Out of Eden Walk. Near Maqna, Saudi Arabia.

Milestone 16: Near Maqna, Saudi Arabia

Milestone 17: Wadi Rum

The second "China Chat" with Paul Salopek (Out of Eden Walk), Edward Wong (Diplomatic Correspondent, The New York Times), Evan Osnos (Staff Writer, The New Yorker), Neysun Mahboubi (Research Scholar, The Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania), and Susan Jakes (Editor, ChinaFile at Asia Society). This conversation took place via Twitter Spaces on October 13, 2022.

Second China Chat with Paul Salopek

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 81 was recorded on day 3,543 of the Walk in Jianmenguan, Sichuan, China.

Paul writes, “Long contested between warring states, Sword Gate Pass in the sawtooth mountains of China’s Sichuan Province was recognized as a strategic military choke point as far back as the third century. The Chinese idiom, 'One man at the pass keeps 10,000 at bay,' is alleged to refer to this towering and supposedly impregnable gateway to the ancient kingdom of Shu. Today, on any forgiving afternoon, you can spill a five-yuan iced coffee, not blood, at the summit.”

Read more and explore Milestone 81 in full here: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/projects/out-of-eden-walk/milestones/2023-04-milestone-81-sword-gate-pass

Milestone 81: Sword Gate Pass

The third "China Chat" with Paul Salopek (Out of Eden Walk), Edward Wong (Diplomatic Correspondent, The New York Times), Neysun Mahboubi (Research Scholar, The Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania), and Susan Jakes (Editor, ChinaFile at Asia Society). This conversation took place via Twitter Spaces on March 9, 2023.

Third China Chat with Paul Salopek

The fourth “China Chat” with Paul Salopek (Out of Eden Walk), Edward Wong (Diplomatic Correspondent, The New York Times), Evan Osnos (Staff Writer, The New Yorker), Kaitlin Yarnall (Chief Storytelling Officer, National Geographic Society), Neysun Mahboubi (Research Scholar, The Center for the Study of Contemporary China, University of Pennsylvania), and Susan Jakes (Editor, ChinaFile at Asia Society). This conversation took place via X / Twitter Spaces on August 16, 2023.

Fourth China Chat with Paul Salopek

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 82 was recorded on day 3,559 of the Walk in Hanzhong, Shaanxi, China.

Paul writes, “A scene from the last zero-COVID autumn in northwestern China. It was raining, and we’d been trying to outwalk snap lockdowns that sprawled across rural counties the size of small European countries. A dance of fools around invisible health boundaries that would pop up with little warning. One town had run out of natural gas because tanker-truck drivers were being quarantined. We reached Hanzhong exhausted, but couldn’t stay. The city of 3.8 million was slipping into mass lockdown because they’d found one positive case at a school. It turned out to be a false alarm. But we plodded on anyway.”

Read more and explore Milestone 82 in full here: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestones/2023-04-milestone-82-dance-fools#introduction

Milestone 82: Dance of Fools

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 83 was recorded on day 3,599 of the Walk near Louguantai Temple, Shaanxi, China.

Paul writes, “We were making for the Daoist temple where, according to legend, the ancient philosopher Lao Tzu wrote down the Tao Te Ching. We crossed through unkempt gardens of kiwis and passed a lettuce field where a farmer had placed a hand-written sign: Steal Vegetables and Your Family Will Die. But there was nobody around to pilfer high-fiber, leafy greens of any kind. This was during the height of the zero COVID policy, and the land was as bereft of humans as if our species had never been born. The temple too was locked up. The monks hadn’t ventured beyond their walls in 10 days. Lao Tzu got around on an ox. Fed up with civilization’s moral decay, he rode into the wilderness never to be heard from again. We empathized.”

Read more and explore Milestone 83 in full here:

Milestone 83: No Human in Sight

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 84 was recorded on day 3,644 of the Walk near Yijun County, Shaanxi, China. 

Paul writes, “We’d been walking gingerly for days, both of us, barely recovered from COVID. The narrow farm lanes boomed with trucks, and their concrete lanes slalomed north from the old Silk Road city of Xi’an, crossing endless hills and gullies. A land stubbled with brittle cornstalks. With scraps of snow in the leeward sides of furrows. Magpies screeched like rusty hinges in the windbreaks of Chinese scholar trees. In some fields the oldest, broken remnants of the Great Wall jutted like rotten molars. Above: a weak sun the color of wax. Everywhere lay a pale coating of macaroon dust: on the houses, on the cars, on your lunch of noodles, on your dreams. Blown loess, it was. We were crossing the famous yellow earth plateau.”

Read more and explore Milestone 84 in full here: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestones/2023-07-milestone-84-everywhere-dust#introduction

Milestone 84: Everywhere Dust

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 85 was recorded on day 3,722 of the Walk near Yan'an, Shaanxi, China.

Paul writes, “’I can do it myself!’ cried Ms. Fu. ‘I can do it myself! I can do it myself!’

There were four of us walking together: Luo Xin, Luo Yin, Liu Lifeng, and Liu Kankan. Ms. Fu was embarrassed that we helped load her scooter-cart with firewood. She was collecting the fuel in a dry valley frizzy with brown trees and grass that fed the middle reach of the Yellow River. Tillers were out in their limpet hats preparing the fields for corn. They turned their backs, hoeing furiously, if we came too close. But after we’d walked by, they leaned on their hoes and stared. A new highway was built, but Shaanxi’s hinterland still didn’t see too many outsiders—least of all on foot. The last famous one was Mao. He marched through in ’36 on the way to take Lüliang. But all Ms. Fu wanted was to finish her chore; to go home for a hot glass of tea.”

Read more and explore Milestone 85 in full here: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestones/2023-08-milestone-85-i-can-do-it-myself#introduction

Milestone 85: 'I can do it myself!'

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 86 was recorded on day 3,741 of the Walk near Xinyizhen, Shanxi, China.

Paul writes, “We climbed up from the Yellow River to the city of Lüliang, and a storm was blowing in from Inner Mongolia. The big, windy, lonely, new roads that exited the city were almost empty of pedestrians. This was not uncommon in China, where booming infrastructure often leapfrogs the presence of people. There was nobody around to talk to. But someone had left a plastic cup containing incense at the intersection, doubtless to honor some ancestor or family member for the Qingming Festival—Grave Sweeping Day. The festival is said to date back more than 2,500 years, when a servant proved his extreme devotion by feeding a slice of his own thigh to a hungry lord during a period of exile. When the lord regained power, he neglected to reward the servant. Eventually, the lord felt pretty guilty about this. So years later, he located the aged servant living like a hermit in the forest, and when the servant refused to meet and be thanked, the lord burned the servant out. The servant died. Now the lord felt extra guilty. He declared a national holiday.

I know. I don’t get this story, either.

The next day, while we hiked across the Lüliang Mountains, it snowed.”

Read more and explore Milestone 86 in full here: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestones/2023-11-milestone-86-hungry-my-lord-heres-slice-my-thigh#introduction

Milestone 86: 'Hungry, My Lord? Here's a Slice of My Thigh'

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 87 was recorded on day 3,751 of the Walk  ear Xinzhou, Shanxi, China.

Paul writes, “There were fields of loess where farmers were out planting onions.

We walked up over the tan, grassy gap of Shiling Guan, a strategic pass between the rich trading cities of Taiyuan and Xinzhou in central Shanxi Province, a vast upland that historically had been a buffer zone between western pastoralists and Han farmers. An ancient brick gate in a village had been built, according to its faded stone plaque, by 133 local men in the year 1587. A shrine beside the crumbling gate honored Wǔdàoshén, the Five Ways Gods who represent the five manifestations of heaven. Atop this high vaulted entryway, the Kuomintang had constructed a sloppy concrete machinegun pillbox against invading Japanese in 1937. (The Japanese flanked the position and took Taiyuan anyway.) The region had experienced many wars going back 3,000 years. So it goes.

Nightfall obliged us to shelter at a roadside inn that featured shelves of fake books used as decorations in the lobby. The titles on the cardboard spines included, in English, The Descent of Man and Anne of Green Gables. Teletubby statues stood at attention outside each room door. The Teletubbies were named Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa, and Po. They were of molded plastic in bright primary colors and six-feet tall. The effect in aggregate was creepy, like a hallway of leering off-world honor guards, and sleep came uneasily.”

Read more and explore Milestone 87 in full here: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestones/2023-12-milestone-87-fake-books-and-teletubbies#introduction

Milestone 87: Fake Books and Teletubbies

Every hundred miles, Paul Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestone 88 was recorded on day 3,767 of the Walk in near Donghenanzhen, Shanxi, China.

Paul writes, “The concrete village road was devoid of people but buzzed with sounds: Distant tractors. The cawing of overhead magpies. The faraway waw waw waw of barking dogs. Open space rang all around.

Faded old jackets and trousers—work clothes—were slung across the lower branches of elms lining the empty road. As if some lost party of sinners had stripped in haste. Had walked into rapture.

Exactly 85 years before, in May of 1938, Mao’s troops had opened a dry-goods store in the adjacent village of Donghenanzhen. The Red Army took a stab here at capitalist self-sufficiency. The communists bought 3,042 yuan’s worth of salt, paper, soap, and bolts of cloth from city merchants, hauled this modest inventory to the village on the backs of 11 donkeys—maybe along this selfsame road—and earned a profit of 800 yuan. One month later, their frenemies, the Nationalist Chinese troops, would blow up dikes along the nearby Yellow River to slow the Japanese advance into central China. The resulting flood drowned a million people. Survivors might have slogged this road too.

I was walking with Becky the entrepreneur, with Luo the historian, and He Ping, a mountaineer.

We were pounding out the final miles of Shanxi Province, pushing hard for Beijing. We were taking a breather, packs off, pacing in small brooding circles atop the leaf shadows spackling the desolate road. As if awaiting a savior. I thought: What if? And I thought: Does the power of reason only serve to deceive me? But it was just a false alarm.”

Read more and explore Milestone 88 in full here: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestones/2024-02-milestone-88#introduction

Milestone 88: Waiting to Be Saved

Waves against the hull. The sound of the Caspian, 3,300 miles into the Out of Eden Walk.

Milestone 34: Aboard the MV Fikret Emirov on the Caspian Sea

National Geographic Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Paul Salopek is walking 24,000 miles across the globe in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Out of Eden Walk

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