National Geographic journalist Paul Salopek has been walking around the world since 2013. But now that he’s in Alaska, his main mode of transportation is about to change.
National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek writing for deadline in a forest campsite in Takato Machi, Ina City, Nagano, Japan. May 15, 2025. National Geographic journalist Paul Salopek has been walking around the world since 2013.
But now that he’s in Alaska, his main mode of transportation is about to change. He’s following the path of Stone Age human migration out of Africa and across the globe. He started in Ethiopia, walked out of Africa, through the Middle East, Central Asia, the Himalayas, China, South Korea and Japan. Along the way, he speaks with people he meets, takes videos of the landscape around him, and writes up his experiences.
National Geographic hosts the project, which is called theAs Salopek described it, the experience of walking this long journey is a way to connect with people around the world more deeply — and more slowly — than any other form of travel.
“I’ve likened it to a listening journey, where I just open my ears and my eyes and kind of let people, hopefully, if they trust me enough, open their hearts and share their concerns and their dreams,” he said. Paul Salopek walks through the Prince Rupert Marina to resume his journey, taking a private boat to Ketchikan, Alaska on June 12, 2025. Last year, he arrived back in North America via container ship from Asia.
He started walking again at Beluga Point near Anchorage. He then walked down the Glen Highway, floated the Copper River, and walked the outer coast of Alaska to Gustavus, where he is now.
“Alaska is important in that global picture,” he said. “Because, of course, it’s the bridge to the Americas, where people you know, on foot and by skin covered vessels, presumably dispersed into this continent. ” Salopek’s arrival in Southeast Alaska marks a shift in how he will approach his journey.
While he has taken boats when necessary to cross large bodies of water, he’s about to take a small one as part of his experiment mimicking the path of human migration.
“The methodology is going to change here in Gustavus,” he said. “For the first time, I’m planning to go south by sea kayak. And the reasoning there is that ancient humans who dispersed into this continent also used watercraft, and I want to honor that passage. So the plan is soon to be kayak paddling south towards Vancouver through the Inside Passage.
” Of course, people today, not just thousands of years ago, still take small boats throughout Southeast Alaska. In just a couple of weeks, Indigenous people across the region and state will set out in canoes — as well as planes and ferries and catamarans — to come to Celebration, the biennial cultural gathering in Juneau. Throughout Salopek’s journey, he said he’s learned that humanity, despite conflict and strife, has a lot in common.
As of last June, he’d traveled more than 21,000 miles total — 15,000 were by foot. Most people he’s encountered are concerned about their families, their work, the economy and the climate crisis.
“If you sit down with somebody over a cup of tea or over a beer, and you spend enough time talking and listening,” he said. “You’ll find that their concerns are pretty much your own. ” In 2013, National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek set out on foot to retrace our ancestors’ global migration. “There are tectonic shifts happening in the world right now,” he said.
“I feel them even when I’m out walking in remote mountains, in the Himalaya Mountains in Central Asia, or, you know, walking down the Glen Highway in Alaska. I can feel vibrations under my feet that we all feel, that the world is in a phase of rapid change. ” But he said the slow process of walking helps combat the dizziness we all feel in this moment in history.
“Walking kind of slows you down so that you can see time and its fullness,” he said. “And I think that helps put things into perspective that what we’re going through now has happened before, probably has happened many times before in human history, and that human beings are great problem solvers. We are a problem-solving species. ” Salopek said his sea kayak journey will begin soon.
He’s ultimately heading for the southern tip of South America, where he will end his journey having walked more than 25,000 miles.
Southeast National Geographic Out Of Eden Walk Paul Salopek Sea Kayaking
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