<i>"There is an actual neurological basis to what I am talking about...You can make a pretty good evolutionary argument that this was how we were designed to absorb information at about 5km an hour (3mph)"</i><p>For me walking is more conducive to careful thinking than any other activity, and taking a walk has frequently proven to be the best way to work on my hardest problems, deepest mysteries, and most stressful situations. Do others walk to think?<p>Having worked with several startups over the past 16 years, I'll make the observation that I've been in a tiny minority on this count, and I find myself wondering what kind of situational & cultural biases in the startup world work against walking as a way of thinking. Keyboards, cars, commutes, an obsession with faster-is-better, craving novelty, fear of "missing the window." What else?
Hopefully he'll be more lucky with the russian visa than Karl Bushby [1], who's been hiking in the other direction. Unfortunately most information on his site has been removed.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.odysseyxxi.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.odysseyxxi.com/</a>
His route takes him through hundreds of miles of Arctic tundra. As someone who has spent time in the far north:<p><i>Walking on tundra is like walking on a head of cabbage that is sitting on a four-inch sponge that is floating in four inches of water. The cabbage heads are all about eight inches apart. When you step on them, they are going to twist in some unknown direction and slide your foot onto the sponge, or into the four inches of water. The really bad tundra, known as bottom, is about eight inches deep and is sitting on top of sucking mud.</i> --<a href="http://whiterick.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/dalton-highway-caribou-hunt-tundra-torture/" rel="nofollow">http://whiterick.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/dalton-highway-car...</a><p><i>Stepping on a tussock is like stepping on a toothbrush, Toolik scientists like to say. You try to avoid it. So tundra walking is like treading on the jostling shoulders of a million people</i> --<a href="http://discovermagazine.com/1996/jun/runningontundra787" rel="nofollow">http://discovermagazine.com/1996/jun/runningontundra787</a><p><i>Tundra comes in three exciting flavors: bog tundra, high alpine tundra, and original tundra. They say walking on tundra is like walking on bowling balls covered in something squishy</i> --<a href="http://mattylite.blogspot.com/2010/07/alaska-fact-or-fiction.html" rel="nofollow">http://mattylite.blogspot.com/2010/07/alaska-fact-or-fiction...</a><p><i>hiking on tundra forces you into a gait that is not like walking on pavement (straight up and down)... tundra is more liking walking on a waterbed... you are using lots of the accessory muscles just to keep upright</i> --<a href="http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/72728-Boot-recommendations-for-September-Caribou-in-Kotz" rel="nofollow">http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/72728-Boo...</a><p><i>"Walking on tundra is like, is like,--tell him what it's like, Magee." "It's like walking over slippery footballs half-sunk in slime," said the Irishman promptly.</i> --<a href="http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/b/23082-the-boy-with-the-u-s-survey-by-rolt-wheeler?start=110" rel="nofollow">http://www.freefictionbooks.org/books/b/23082-the-boy-with-t...</a><p><i>For those of you who haven't walked across the tundra it is a giant sponge. When you walk your foot sinks and you have to lift it really high to get the next step, as some put it..walking on tundra is like walking on a giant stair stepper.</i> --<a href="http://nicholiepoki03.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-to-remember.html" rel="nofollow">http://nicholiepoki03.blogspot.com/2011/09/week-to-remember....</a><p><i>walking on the tundra can be a miserable experience. extremely uneven (kinda like walking on basketballs), wet, and full of holes. make sure you have good waterproof footwear with good ankle support rolling an ankle is very easy on this stuff.</i> --<a href="http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/115323-Trekking-Poles-on-the-Tundra" rel="nofollow">http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php/115323-Tr...</a>
It's fun reading about other trips across the world, even if they weren't all done on foot.<p>Journalist Nellie Bly held the world record for fastest time in 1890, traveling the world unchaperoned in 72 days
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly</a>
I've always dreamed of taking a year or more to walk the back-roads of the US and visit all 48 contiguous states on foot. The technical challenge of plotting a route to traverse each state exactly once is appealing in its own right.
Who is this guy? This trip is going to be more challenging than ascending Mt Everest. Unless this guy is an extreme adventure hiker, this is going to end badly or he is going to quit. I hope for his sake he gives up early.<p>If this were a trip planned by someone like Andrew Skurka, then I'd believe it, but this is a journalist with a crazy plan.
As cool as this is, the original humans probably did most of this route by boat along the coast. They had to have done the hop to Australia by boat circa 45,000 years ago; they probably crossed the Red Sea by boat; and why else would the diaspora have been so fast along thousands of miles of coast relative to expansion inland?