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.
My walking guide, Oybek Ruzmetov, strode up to the first person we saw at this Milestone. It was a woman. She was walking toward us across a bridge in Kattakurgan. We weren’t having much luck interviewing women in rural Uzbekistan. Women reacted to my earnest requests to talk about their lives with masks of stone—or smiles of panic. Rural Uzbekistan was fairly gender segregated. Good luck with that, I thought, watching Ruzmetov launch into his pitch.
The woman walked over to me. Smiling a golden smile, she agreed to be questioned. She was eager to talk. No: She was positively effusive. I blinked with astonishment.
“How did you do it?” I asked Ruzmetov.
“Easy,” he said. “I told her we were with Uzbek television.”
I told the woman we weren’t with Uzbek television. I told Ruzmetov we couldn’t do things that way anymore. I consoled myself that one day, somewhere, perhaps in a nunnery without electricity in Ireland, we would get a volunteer cleanly, through the allure of text.
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
Zulqyho Nizomova
homemaker, age 50
Who are you?
I’m a simple citizen of Uzbekistan. I have six daughters and no sons! I have 13 grandchildren. My husband died. How old are you? (Fifty-four, I tell her.) Ah, he was the same age as you. He worked as a teacher.
Where are you going?
Home.
Where do you come from?
The bazaar, to buy food.
Observations from social media from the Milestone location
In this region, the death of Uzbekistan’s President was announced. One social media user posted: “He left that day when he gave us freedom.” He was the first president of Uzbekistan from its independence on September 1, 1991, until his death on September 2, 2016. Another user posts about local markets and tourist attractions.
A video showing the landscape around this Milestone
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