For years, National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has traversed thousands of miles on every continent — on foot — documenting his journey in a project called Out of Eden Walk.
But of course, if you’re traveling around the world, you will encounter many bodies of water.
When that happens, Salopek typically hops on board a big ship — like the cargo ship that Salopek took across the Caspian Sea, one part of his global trek that forced him off land.
Salopek joined Host Marco Werman to share his experiences crossing Earth’s watery horizons.
Marco Werman: So, over the past 13 years, Paul, you’ve been walking in the pathways of the first humans who explored the world during the Stone Age. A lot has changed on the planet since then, but one thing that has not changed is that seas and oceans remain major obstacles to foot travel. How did our ancestors handle that?
Paul Salopek: You know, in short, nobody really knows. Not for the long blue water crossings, anyway. One scientist told me that earlier species of hominins, like Neanderthals, stopped at beaches and just turned left or right. But our crazy species, Homo sapiens, were the first to begin kind of pushing logs into the surf, if you can imagine the scene. Just disappearing over the horizon. Again and again, until someone actually reached an offshore island or cape. So, seas may have been lower back then, but archaeologists sort of think that ancient people might’ve used bamboo rafts to reach Australia from Southeast Asia. The early colonizers of the Americas may have used dugout canoes. The trouble is, these artifacts don’t last very long and rot away. So, nobody really knows.
Since we began these conversations, Paul, this is one aspect of your movement that has fascinated me, because you don’t use planes, cars, trains or other motorized travel, but you do hop aboard cargo ships and ferries along your walking route whenever you bump into large bodies of water. Why not just fly?
You know, flying is my last resort. So, here’s why: I’m trying to keep my body in contact with the surface of the Earth as I do my own migration … like the ancient people. So, my default travel when I’m not walking is by ship, on seas. And besides, you meet interesting characters at sea.
Well, one of the interesting characters you met aboard a ship was the engineer of what’s known as a camel boat. You hitched a ride on this to cross the Red Sea from Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, to the port of Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia. So, this engineer was listening to bird songs on a laptop when you met him. Paul, set the scene here. What was going on with this engineer running this camel boat?
This was aboard the Abuyasser II, which was carrying about 8,000 sheep and 900 camels from Africa to Saudi Arabia. The engineer’s name was Jamal El-Osili, and he was part of a Syrian crew that was basically homeless, kind of forever circling the Red Sea because of the civil war back home in Syria. They really couldn’t go home. It was a very melancholic mood on this ship, besides the fact that these animals are going for slaughter, right? It was kind of the anti-ark. But Jamal was listening to canary singing competitions posted online from places like Syria and Algeria to cheer himself up. I didn’t even know these existed … that caged birds were competing at singing … but they were. It struck me as this kind of perfect bittersweet moment that embodied his own kind of prisoner status at sea and his homesickness.
A moment ago, Paul, we heard waves crashing against the ship you were aboard, crossing the Caspian Sea between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. You were riding along with Turkish truckers on this night ferry. That has got to be a sea passage [that] I doubt we’ll find on most tour ship itineraries. What was that like?
Indeed, off the beaten track. I hit the Caspian. I couldn’t get around it because in the north, there was trouble in Chechnya, and in the south, I couldn’t get a visa to go through Iran. So, I had to take a ship over. It was a night passage, on a charcoal-dark sea, and this boat was crammed with Turkish truck drivers and their trucks. They had congregated in the galley and were overseen and kept on a straight line there by a very severe woman steward. I noticed when we reached Oktav, Kazakhstan, to disembark, a few of them were a little tipsy. So, they were gonna present kind of a highway peril going into Central Asia. But [what] struck me, the beauty of that particular sea passage, was [that] I felt like I was really kind of on a modern version of the Silk Road, right? Because these truckers were carrying European goods all the way into Central Asia, through Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. So, I felt I was almost at a caravanserai that was floating across the Caspian.
Wow, that is so cool. So, were these truckers sleeping on this overnight passage or were they drinking or what’s going on while you were on board?
I think they were probably supposed to be sleeping, right? Because as soon as they got off in Kazakhstan, they would have like days of driving ahead, across the Steppes of Central Asia; but some were carousing, some obviously had smuggled a little alcohol onboard. Yeah so, maybe in a few corners, some parties are going on on the ship.
So, I learned, Paul, that you once worked as a deep-sea fisherman, which should not surprise me. What did that experience do to your level of readiness when you had to take some of these very utilitarian ship passages?
You know, I loved it. I have very strong, good memories about working at sea. I worked in the North Pacific on scallopers. I worked on the Indian Ocean on shrimpers. So, it was kind of a nice break, you know? I’m walking for years across continents, kind of taking my backpack off and dropping it on a deck somewhere, and watching the sea slide by. Often much faster than I walk, right? Even the slowest ferries are going much faster than I walk. It was kind of exhilarating. And a little bit like homecoming for me. So, they were pleasant. I liked it.
And now you’re about to leave Japan — where you’re speaking to us from — for Alaska, aboard a gigantic thousand-foot container ship that will carry you thousands of miles across the North Pacific. These types of monster vessels transport most of the world’s consumer goods today. What can you tell us about this megaship and how it might change the ocean-going experience?
This is going to be very different, Marco. As you mentioned, this ship is as long as three football fields. It’s just enormous. I’ll be able to, kind of, jog around it. I won’t have to stop walking. I can just do circuits on deck. It’ll take 12 days to cross the North Pacific. This particular ship is Danish, and it’ll be carrying 9,000 containers. It’s kind of the classic modern caravan camel, if you will, of the early 21st century. Globalization now, global trade, 80% is carried by these gigantic vessels.
I’ve just been reading about the drop in shipments from Asia to North America due to tariffs from the White House and retaliatory tariffs. Will the ship leave on time, or will it be at capacity?
This part of the modern world is very in sync with my kind of low-tech walking world, [which] is … I don’t know, right? Because it’s incumbent on trade. So, there’s a sailing date out of Yokohama, Japan, and it’s provisional for now, and I won’t know until I get there. Hopefully, it will sail.
Parts of the interview have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Writer and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has embarked on a 24,000-mile storytelling trek across the world called the “Out of Eden Walk.” The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonders of our world, has funded Salopek and the project since 2013. Explore the project here. Follow the journey on X at @PaulSalopek, @outofedenwalk and also at @InsideNatGeo.
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