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 Assam hills look, from afar, like rumpled green velvet. Rain clouds rub their grey bellies across the summits. A kind of wet heaven. A water world. Streams. Creeks. Springs. Swamps. Gushing rivers. The air is heavy with moisture. A billion leaves drip. Nothing stays dry.
We toiled up steep paths greased with mud. We teetered across whitewater rapids atop mossy logs. We poled across silted currents on makeshift bamboo rafts. Armies of leeches sucked at our blood. We threw pinches of salt on them, to make them fall off. Our local walking partners, young Karbi boys, carried razor-sharp machetes. I’d feel their blades against my sweaty skin. Walking behind, they were scraping the back of my neck, scraping my arms, delicately flicking the bloodsuckers off.
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
Isiah Rongpi
Farmer, age 49
Who are you?
I’m a farmer. I also collect firewood and make charcoal.
Where do you come from?
I’m from here. I’ve not been beyond Umrangso. I’ve not been to Guwahati. (The capital of Assam state.) The jungle has shrunk a lot since I was a boy. Massively. Now there are humans all over. The bears are all gone. The tigers, all gone. There are still some elephants left. We don’t worry about them much. When they come, we just go around them. When I was a boy, there were so many.
Where are you going?
I don’t know. I’m getting old. What I see is more farming. There’s not much else to do. I’ve got two small boys. They need to study. I want them to become strong. I’ll make them a garden. I’ll plant them some flowers and fruits. I’ve got 12 lychee seedlings. In five or six years, they’ll produce. That’s about it. The garden is the thing. Beyond that, who knows?
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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