Man Walks Nearly 3000 Miles Through China | Hacker News Reader

Man Walks Nearly 3000 Miles Through China

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111 pointsrichardknop66 comments

I walked 113 miles (182 km) of the South West Coast Path in Cornwall, England. That took "only" 9 days, but it was enough that when I arrived in a decent-size town after a week of walking, I felt a sort of vertigo simply from being around so many people, shops, and all the rest. A week spent just walking (and eating full English breakfast every single day) was enough to feel something really different.

I highly recommend ultra-long walks, and the South West Coast Path (600 miles and two months to do the whole thing). There's nothing quite like it.

I'm contemplating walking the Scottish National Trail (http://www.scottishnationaltrail.org.uk/) - backpacking and using bothies (http://www.mountainbothies.org.uk/).

I've walked a fair bit of this trail before - at least the bits in the Highlands and walking it in one go would be rather cool.

Cycling round the North Sea would be rather interesting as well (http://www.northsea-cycle.com/).

I too would recommend these types of walk - a couple of other ideas for long trails that I've particularly enjoyed:

- Lykian Way, Turkey (http://www.lycianway.com/)

- Rota Vincentina, Portugal (http://www.rotavicentina.com/)

Question - what gear did you take, etc? You mention the english breakfast every day - I take it that meant you stayed in a village every day? So no camping gear etc? Did you buy new supplies in each place?

Two of us went on the premise of a long weekend. We liked it so much we stayed on the trail for the whole week, and only returned home due to a prior appointment (which proved useless, drat). So we had clothes for three days and we did washing in the basin each evening. We had a small laptop, snacks, and not much else.

The South West Coast Path is dotted with B&Bs, inns, pubs with accommodation, etc. These are often placed at convenient distances apart, 10 or 20 km at most usually. Accommodation prices ranged from 50 GBP at a simple golf course (the room had no proper heat, but the lounge/restaurant was charming) to 95 GBP at the Tinners Arms in Zennor (population 217 as of this writing), a spotless room above a pub from the thirteenth century. The chef there was from afar and cooked spectacular food in this, the middle of nowhere.

You can camp instead, and in the high season you may even need to. We went in autumn when there were few distance walkers (downsides: not warm, some rain, quite a bit of mud in spots, every sleeping place in Porthcurno closed for the winter, but a B&B took us in and the local Elvis impersonator invited us to stay with him but he drove a camper van so...).

fantastic, thanks for the reply!

Similarly, in the Eastern US we have the Appalachian Trail (http://www.appalachiantrail.org/) at 2200 miles. Many folks do the whole thing, and many more do various subsets. Highly recommended.

While it's less famous, I've always wanted to through hike the Pacific Crest Trail (http://www.pcta.org/) which is the west coast equivalent.

I hope that at some point in my life, I'll be able to drop everything for a few months and go hike the Pacific Northwest Trail. It's more a route than an actual trail. It goes from Waterton, AB into Montana, and then parallels the international border (more or less) to the Washington coast.

http://www.pnt.org/maps/map-pnt.gif

A friend of mine extended it significantly:

http://www.underhumanpower.com

Sweet. Like a mini Jason Lewis (http://www.jasonexplorer.com/adventurer_jason_lewis_about/)

It's become fashionable to walk along Saint-Jacques de Compostelle pilgrimage path in France and Spain. Would you call it ultra-long walk?

Anyways, the good part of it is that you have cheap and clean pilgrim hotels all the way, and the food is quite good in most places.

Yes of course. I've seen it, but not walked it. Also known as the Way of St. James, the typical route seems to be about 500 miles (800 km), which is certainly substantial. And if you're into the religious aspects, there are probably few better places to spend a few weeks going slowly. But you probably won't find the sort of isolation that you would on less popular/accessible paths.

Really depends on the time of year and the actual year. I lived right on the path of the camino and talked to tons of people who were completing it. "Holy years" will see about 1.5x to 2x more pilgrims. It peaks at el dia de santiago (July 25). That's when the trail, particularly the last leg, will be quite crowded. On July 25th it will be a steady stream flowing into the main square. In late summer, fall or spring, from what I gather it's quite easy to not see a soul on most days. There are also a lot of side routes off the main path.

Also, although the route has a lot of religious meaning, loads of people who are hiking aren't religious at all. So don't let that discourage you.

I cycled, hitch-hiked, and walked a rough perimeter of ireland.

I was with a friend, though. It was a lot of fun and really interesting.

Had a bivy sack and sleeping bag so most nights we just walked off the road and slept wherever seemed hidden enough. We took about five weeks or so. Stayed in random towns and such for different durations, but the walking part was always my favorite.

I'd like to do more trips like that, except try a few by myself. I get to and from work walking pretty often. Right now that's only about two miles, but even if it's five to ten, it can be nice. It takes awhile, but it's always been therapeutic to me. Walking home today, actually. Love it.

Roadside bivy sack: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yxfmxk7qk0mmhx7/_MG_6280.JPG

I would strongly second this recommendation -- I've done about 200 miles over different legs of the SWCP (across two years), and it is a magnificent way to spend a weekend. Some of the scenery is quite breath-taking, and literally all the places I stayed in (ranging from campsites to B&Bs) were excellent.

I wonder how much ~sensory depravation~ we're getting for free with the average sedentary/city lifestyle.

So, I'm guessing blogspammy Upworthy links are banned, but upworthy-clone links aren't yet? This side by side comparison of the two sites' layouts will shock you:

http://i.imgur.com/kvcdjCB.png

Thats about how any long trail hiker looks. My personal best is the John Muir trail (15 days no resupply). That was plenty to see a difference. My wife and I both lost about 10 lbs, and neither of us had that much to loose. I actually got sick and threw up after eating regular food at a restaurant the day we finished.

Some day I would like to do an art project of before and after photos of all of the AT hikers one year. I think it would be impressive, and would only require a few weeks at the start and about a month or so at the finish to get a good group of people.

I highly recommend long hikes/walks as a method of realigning yourself (and improving health).

For my father's 60th birthday, we hiked the 270 miles of the Long Trail. It was a grueling experience at first, but one of the best things I've ever done. We became much closer afterwards, and I lost about 40 lbs.

Call me jaded, but this is another "let's travel somewhere exotic/remote and post about it later because it's cool" doesn't get me anymore. But I don't get why he didn't just start walking from where he was. If you want to wander and just walk, start from there, no need to go to China. Like I said, a little bit jaded.

I also would have liked to know why he didn't leave from where he lived. I bet the slow change of lifestyle and landscape going from western Europe to Asia would have been really interesting to experience.

I've read parts of his book. He had already been living in China as a student for a few years when he decided to start his trip, if I remember correctly.

If you live in a rich western country and want to take time off to wander then it's going to be less expensive to do so in a country like China.

It's also probably much more interesting to go to a poorer country where people are more likely to be farming out in the countryside or walking/biking around than just walking by some highway in a western country.

I take it you live in a city. I'm guessing because I've learned that even educated city-folk really have no fucking clue what goes on a mere 15 miles out of their city limits.

You could--today, right now, right this very minute--probably get somewhere in less than an hour where people are farming in the countryside, biking around, etc. You could get out there and see it and be back in time for lunch.

I live in one of the most expensive, overpopulated regions of the United States, and taking an hour drive west--with most of that hour being dealing with traffic just to get past the first 10 miles--and be in gorgeous, rural countryside with hills and trees and beautiful fields and streams and animals everywhere.

Or I could even stay home. I could walk down one of the hundreds of streets I've never walked down before. And it will most likely be a veritable smorgasbord of new experiences.

Just because you've parked your butt in one place for a while doesn't mean you know everything about it. Geography is a dense place.

I try and walk down at least one new street a week (preferably per day but that can be tricky during the work week.) London does make this easy, mind.

True, but also: it's not particularly hard anywhere else.

I grew up in the sticks. The country. The middle of nowhere. Or, as I used to call it, to the left of the middle of nowhere, because at least the middle of nowhere had an intellectually interesting distinction of being in the middle of something.

Yeah, it's "boring" out there. We dreamed of living in the city and going out to craft beer bars with a wider selection than just Dogfish Head (if they even had that) every night and seeing awesome bands play who weren't the same, one band you've been seeing every other night since high school.

Now that I live in the city, I dream of living in the country and going hiking every weekend. It's "boring" here, when all there is to do is go check out world-class art museums and Michelin-rated restaurants. I miss sledding in the snow. I miss seeing the stars every night--all of them. I miss not living under an airport takeoff path.

Point being, people have a tendency to do 10% of what a place has to offer and assume the other 90% is the same. One of the first few months that I lived in Philadelphia (when I lived there, I'm in DC now), I met up with a friend at this place called Reading Terminal Market, for lunch. He had lived there for 10 years and had never been to the place. "Who knew this was even here?" he said. Uh, dude, it's one of the most popular places in the city. You can't watch a travel show about Philadelphia and not have them mention it.

Some people are just dense. If you're not engaged in your location, the grass will always appear a shade or two closer to #00ff00 everywhere else. Someone, somewhere, wishes they live where you live.

Well, barring somewhere really fucked like Mogadishu or something. Hell, I bet there is an aspiring photojournalist somewhere who'd like to be there for 6 months, though. So you never know.

Wholeheartedly agree. Question is though, is it possible to appreciate what you have without losing it first? You seem to have been bored of your surroundings until you lost them (ie moved to the city). Only then you realized that in fact country life is not as bad and there's loads to do... So IMO to appreciate and discover the 90% one first has to lose or abandon it all.

Exactly right. My budget walking in England (see my other comment here) was about 230 USD per day for two people; cycling in Malaysia it was 50 USD for the same.

If you're going to do this for a really long time, you may as well travel somewhere that will excite you, and where you can do it four times longer for the same money.

I'm pretty sure I could live in the Scottish Highlands for $50 per day USD to pay for food and stove fuel.... :-)

Access and wild camping are a lot easier in Scotland as well http://www.outdooraccess-scotland.com/

50 USD per day in Malaysia, in country side? Seems like a lot. In China I would go as down as 20$ par day.

50 USD per day for two people together. We stayed in towns, as the Malay countryside is not flush with hotels (longest stretch of highway without one: about 50 km). If two people scrimped they could do it for 30 USD (especially toward the north), but it isn't rural China.

You have to put in cost of air travel to get there, and all the other extra costs of such a trip, but, otherwise, good point, though the truly adventurous people that I've met (and they don't even bother blogging, and no, I'm not one of them) love to travel in developed countries, because it's safer and they can pretty much get away for free, whereas in the poorer countries, the free stuff is already taken. Wow, that was a long sentence :-)

I'd really like to do a real long-distance walk/hike eventually. I tried walking south out of Nagoya station in Japan, aiming to get Hiroshima, but I only ended up going about 50 miles before I ran out of time and had to take the train the rest of the way. I didn't make nearly as much progress as I hoped, at least part due to shoes that weren't appropriate at all, and hadn't been broken in. That was a huge surprise, as I had spent the rest of the year training for a marathon, and figured I was plenty used to foot pain. So I learned that shoes matter just as much for walking as they do for running when it comes to long distance.

I was hoping it was going to be a transformative experience, but either I didn't try hard enough to break habits, or a few days wasn't enough time. Now that I've learned a thing or two about mindfulness, I feel like I'd approach it differently in terms of attitude/mindset. It was still an interesting adventure.

Bah. Headline is misleading. There aren't "photos", it's a 5:18 video.

> A lot of people look at the video thinking “I want to be free like that guy!” – but they don’t realize that I was driven by something, and maybe I was losing control over it.”

very interesting

As someone who just quit his job to walk 2650+ miles along the pacific crest trail I found his last statement very interesting as well.

I'm a pretty normal tech industry hacker who can sometimes be socially awkward and definitely a bit introverted. I'm hiking the PCT because it will force me through things I find uncomfortable like being alone, and meeting new people. As I see it, I'm forcing myself through a tumbler and hoping what comes out the other end is more in line with who I want to be. Very different reasons.

Everyone has different reasons for starting such an adventure but I tend to think that "hoping for a change" might be the worst. Don't get me wrong, I respect this idea, I just feel the starting asumption may lead you somewhere you did not expect at first.

You might not like what you find during your adventure, you might not like what you discover of yourself, you might lie to yourself, incounciously trying to convince yourself that you're on the right path.

Trying to stay really objective towards oneself during such a trip is quite a challenge by itself, a very interesting one.

I feel that hiking / biking for the sake of it, for the beauty of the world, of its people, for the physical performance is a much more truthful experience than any other self-conviction goal.

In the end, what counts stays in you, in your eyes, in your heart and muscles. And that's not the kind of things you can sum up by a video, a blog or any slideshow back home.

That said, I wish sincerely that you find yourself!

I don't get the logic here. "hoping for a change" is certainly a difficult emotion that is not easily resolved and we shouldn't delude ourselves into believing in silver bullets, but why is it worse going out on an adventure than staying where you are? At least you get some exercise, which in my mind is always a good start for inducing an improvement in one's mental state.

Absolutely agreed! But even if the body helps the mind, it can be hard facing yourself, hard admitting you took the wrong direction especially if you are doing it alone.

TLDR: It'll ultimately be a good experience, I can't fathom it being bad in the end.

---

I disagree. I would say it's bad if it is your only course of action towards improving your situation without trying or considering other options than yes, not the best idea ever. For me though it's much different and a lot of consideration went in to my decision.

I'll try not to bore you with details but I want to numb a few social emotional responses I have as an introvert who wants to be more sociable and outgoing. As much as I try to keep a focus on doing that in day to day life it's challenging for me with all the distractions (mostly work). I see the PCT as a way of repeatedly forcing these interactions in a natural way. Everyone I've met as a backpacker/hiker were friendly and approachable and considering your current situation on the PCT you both have a big glaring thing in common that will make connecting that much easier. My problem tends to be finding common ground with your average person and I'm hoping to develop some strategy of doing so easier. What better way to get better at this than to force myself to do it repeatedly while simultaneously doing something I love (backpacking)?

I can't say the goal I have in mind is the correct one, can't say it will absolutely make me a happier/better person... but believe without any doubts that it will have a positive impact on me either through being in better shape or by improving my introspective views, sociability, or my tenacity for taking on challenges, etc.

Direct link to video: http://vimeo.com/4636202

I calculate my life saving in terms of years I can spend walking non-stop. At ~20 years worth, I'll begin.

After soloing Annapurna and GR20 and many US national parks, walking is the only thing I really want to do with my life.

Something similar - 10,000km from Mongolia to Hungary by Horse on the Trail of Genghis Khan:

http://www.timcopejourneys.com/page/journeys/on-the-trail-of...

The share functionality over the video blocks me from allowing that particular flash to load/play. So I can either enable all plugins or not watch the embedded video at all. Just a thought for web developers.

His (more or less) regular blog posts along the way are also quite interesting at times. Plus: plenty of nice pictures.

http://www.thelongestway.com/

Here's the FAQ: http://www.thelongestway.com/frequently-asked-questions

I highly suggest reading `The Places in Between` (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95643.The_Places_in_Betw...) about something similar.

Note, if you look at the actual Vimeo page[0], this was originally posted on May 13, 2009.

[0] http://vimeo.com/4636202

And he did the walk in 2007/2008...

Is that 3000 miles with or without backtracking to pick up the camera he often walked by?

more reddit stuff horay.

BTW this video is super old. Was going around alot on facebook at the time.

Fun to watch ancient videos resurface.

that's about a month's distance to run for a normal long distance runners (90 miles/week).

gotta work on that math buddy

90 miles per day?

Varsity level distance athletes I knew wouldn't run 12 miles a day 7 days a week all month, not even when training. They do more like 5-7 miles, for about 5 days a week during off-season (and something like 15-24 miles about twice about a month or so prior to a marathon event). So it's more like 40-60 miles a week, for a fairly committed athlete?

Not just that, your math indicates running for 30 weeks at 90 miles/week...not a month. That's 7 months =)

More realistically, a really athletic guy who has the comfort of nice running clothes and comfortable places to rest and has been training for a few years, would cover maybe 50 miles running and an additional 28 miles walking each week, and still take about 7 months.

You'll look less silly if you double check why people are impressed by something before dismissing it as trivial (by your tone that's what you seemed to do).

Coo, I feel better about not being at all athletic and still averaging 73km/45mi of (recorded) walking a week for 2014 (746km as of yesterday).

Not sure how long I could keep up 90mi/week though...

About all commenters making fun of you. You meant 7 months (33 weeks). Ultramarathon each day is beyond capabilities of any living (or dead) man on this planet.

Well, this just blatantly isn't true since

"[Dean Karnazes] ran 3,000 miles (4,800 km) across the United States from Disneyland to New York City in 75 days, running 40 to 50 miles (65 to 80 km) per day, 2011"

But it is not 90 miles / day. Still very impressive :)

True but "ultramarathon" is "anything longer than a marathon" and 40-50mi/day easily disproves the "humans can't ultramarathon every day" statement.

I'd agree that it's very unlikely anyone could keep up 90mi/day for very long. If Karnazes can't ...

Here's a guy who ran one 875 ultramarathon in 5 days at the age of 61 - without sleep or otherwise resting:

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/young.html

Cliffy Young is awesome. He's a national hero in Australia.

Yeah, he's amazing. Makes you wonder how many other heroic athletes are just bumbling about in normal life without people noticing them.

I wouldn't be so sure. There's this woman[1] who ran 366 marathons in a year -- that is one per day and two durnig the last day of the year since she started. (And despite the interview was done after she had ran 100 marathons, she finished her project last July with 366 marathons as intended.) Yes, it's not ultramarathons, but I guess she still stretches the boundaries what some of us would consider humans being capable of.

That's almost 15450 kilometers in a year(~9550 miles).

1: http://blog.endomondo.com/2012/11/07/annette-fredskov-366-ma...

Well, I think marathon each day is possible. I believe that's not far from what average persistence hunter runs a day (I have not checked my facts however). Running 3-4 times that is impossible IMHO. I have found this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Transcendence_3100_Mile_Ra...

It is 60 miles / day. Maybe it is upper limit?

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