Regional Summaries
Regional Summaries · 07 October 2019
This regional summary covers our journey from the heart of Kyrgyzstan, in the regional capital of Naryn, as we made our way west to the city of Osh, home of Central Asia's largest bazaar and the border of the next country in our path. Like the northern parts of Kyrgyzstan we walked through, this area did not lack in mountainous terrain, majestic beauty, enveloping dust, generous hospitality, disjunct travel plans, and the constant, albeit slight, changes of each new ridge as we watched the...
Regional Summaries · 26 October 2018
It had been a week of waiting for our mail to come, we were getting restless and angsty to get walking again. It just couldn’t come fast enough. We had done everything there was to do in the small town of Khorgas, which wasn’t much, and had spent the last couple days waiting for the package locked up in our room like hermits, playing computer games, watching movies, and talking on the phone with people back home. The room smelt like butt and fart, but we didn’t mind.
Regional Summaries · 24 August 2018
Our final section of China brought us from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, to the massively vital trade hub of Khorgos, the port between China and Kazakhstan. When I say, “brought us from Urumqi to Khorgos,” it’s not that much of a stretch considering the number of times we were detained by police. This section of our walk has had a very distinct wash, rinse, repeat feel to it; we’d walk, the police would stop us, they’d drive us to the next town and force us to stay in an expensive...
Regional Summaries · 13 July 2018
Having spent more time away from our trailers than we ever anticipated or intended to, we arrived back in Hami in a weird place. As a group, we had isolated ourselves before coming back and tensions were felt in every direction. We were not in a good place having left much unsaid; festering for the last two weeks. We stayed in Hami for a couple days, in one part to hang out with the friends we had made there, Josh, Danny, and Thomas. Josh had saved us from a logistical hurdle when he agreed to...
Regional Summaries · 15 June 2018
Hi. Marta here. It is my second day officially on the silk road with the boys. And it has exceeded all of my expectations... In an unexpected way.
Regional Summaries · 11 May 2018
We had just finished up working two trips with Insight Adventures after taking a little more than a month off to rest our injures from an incredible marathon day. We were rested, willing, and itching to get back on the road to continue our walk. We anticipated this section to be the most challenging, but we had no idea of the kind of challenges it had in store for us. It took us about 5 days to get back to our stuff from getting our stamp at the border. For the last couple weeks of work, we had...
Regional Summaries · 05 April 2018
This regional summary is a weird one. To be completely honest, this region (or rather, this transition between regions) had more distractions and interruptions to our walk than it had actual walking, so bare with me. In a way, it mirrors that our journey itself was in a sort of transition period of its own. In total, we walked fourteen days during this 60-day stay afforded by our most recent visa stamp. It’s easy for me to say that this section was the beginning of many new things for our...
Regional Summaries · 25 January 2018
This leg of the journey was the easiest one to plan the route for. The reason for this is that it leaves no options. The Hexi corridor is a narrow valley squeezed between the Qilian Mountain Range to the south and the Gobi desert to the north. While walking it, we could often see all the routes through the valley: the expressway, the highway, the slow train, and the speed train. Every one of them, with the exception of the speed train moving both goods and people back and forth. The trucks...
Regional Summaries · 10 December 2017
Exiting Shaanxi meant climbing into the mountains. At first, it was a daunting task as our experience in Shaanxi had been relatively flat. The flatness was much appreciated as our intention from the start was to ease into the walk. The mountains ahead of us were only going to get bigger, and two weeks of walking on flat surfaces was more than enough for us to feel “warmed up.”