Hiking the Glenn Highway through Alaska. Published in Asphalt Pilgrims.
Paul Salopek
Every hundred miles Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind. Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but his walked distances are generally much longer. More on these waypoints here.
Every hundred miles Salopek pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind. Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but his walked distances are generally much longer. More on these waypoints here.
The iron ship docks with a clang. There are beaches slathered with baking Russians, baking Brits. Then a port city. Then a checkerboard of olive groves, of yellow hay fields. Empty chalk roads that burn out the eyeballs. Boarded up villas. (The global banking crisis hit hard.) Marooned villages. Old Byzantine churches. The racket of cicadas only ratchets up the heat. Carob trees throw lead-colored shadows. Up in the dry hills above Pyla, an Indian tractor driver points the way north to the Turkish enclave. Sitar music twangs from his ear-buds. Another new arrival. He turns soil that has been plowed for 9,000 years yet still gives. It has always been this way in Cyprus.
A wraparound soundscape at this Milestone
This Milestone’s location on a map
Photos of the ground under Paul’s feet and the sky above at this Milestone
A brief question and answer with the first person Paul meets at this Milestone
Jaskarah Singh
Migrant farm worker, age 22
Who are you?
I am named Jaskarah.
Where do you come from?
Nawanshahr. It is in the Punjab, India. Cyprus is a very nice country. I have two or three friends here who work on the farm. I come to work. Money.
Where are you going?
After one more year, I go home. I want to open my own shop. A clothing shop. This is my dream.
Observations from social media from the Milestone location
In a tourist-heavy country where the official languages are Turkish and Greek, the majority of Tweets from this Milestone appeared in these two languages and English, plus Russian, Tagalog and other languages we were unable to translate. World events came to the fore — politics in Turkey, the conflict in Gaza, the World Cup and Ramadan — as did commentary on local politics. Tourists posted dozens of photos of the beach, and at least one resident posted a Tweet about wanting to go but not making it.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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