Walking The Wilds

Sarah Marquis Tells Asian Geographic About Her Expeditions Walking Around The World – Solo

- Alex W. Campbell

The wind has been howling across the Gobi Desert for weeks, day and night, in all directions. Huddled in her tent, Sarah Marquis woke at 4 am. “I instantly knew something was different: There was no wind outside. And then I heard them.”

Marquis was surrounded by wolves. “That was a magical moment,” she recalls, with awe, rather than fear.

In 2010, the 44-year-old Swiss explorer set off to walk from Siberia to Australia – alone. The journey took two years of preparation – plotting the route, organising permits, learning smatterings of languages, and studying the terrain – the mountains, the water sources, the vegetation, and the weather systems.

Most of the problems that she encountered on the expedition across Asia were human – groups of drunk men following her on horseback in Mongolia, drug dealers harassing her in the Lao jungle, and getting arrested by the special forces in China.

After three years of walking across the continent, she arrived on the vast Nullarbor Plain in South Australia. It was her longest expedition.

But, it was certainly not her first. In 2000, she walked 4,260 kilometres across the United States, from the Canadian to the Mexican border. From 2002 to 2003, she walked 14,000 kilometres in the Australian outback with her faithful dog, Joe. In 2006, she walked from Chile to Peru along the Andes; she walked 7,000 kilometres.