Out of Eden Walk
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Out of Eden Walk
@outofedenwalk.social
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Assembled by Nat Geo, a compilation of 25 photos from this ongoing walk across the world. Images by John Stanmeyer, Murat Yazar, Zhang Hongyi, Liu Lifeng, Youngrae Kim, Soichiro Koriyama, & Paul Salopek, and courtesy Georgia National Museum & E. H. Wilson: www.nationalgeographic.com/impact/artic...
A person stands in an historic quarter of Varanasi, facing away from the photographer. Text overlaid on the photo says, “From National Geographic: ‘For over a decade, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has woven a tapestry of human stories from his epic trail retracing human migration.’ Photo by Paul Salopek, Varanasi, India.” Text overlaid on a photo of five people walking past large tents and also tomatoes on the ground says, “Setting out from Ethiopia in 2013, Salopek has traversed the Middle East, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and East Asia on foot, documenting stories of people he encounters — an odyssey enriched by walking partners, contributing writers and photographers. Photo by Paul Salopek, near Al Quweirah, Jordan.” Text overlaid on a photo of a hand holding three deceased Asian giant hornets says, “Now beyond the halfway point, his slow listening, storytelling project, the Out of Eden Walk, has arrived in North America, where Salopek is planning the ways ahead toward his final destination, the southern tip of South America. Photo by Paul Salopek, Qinling Mountains, China.” Text overlaid on a photo of a person distributing food packages to other people in Mandalay, Myanmar says, "These photos offer a look back at the trail so far! See more photos in ‘An ongoing walk across the world in 25 photos’ at www.nationalgeographic.com Photo by Paul Salopek, Mandalay, Myanmar"
November 3, 2025 at 4:27 AM
outofedenwalk.social
A message from Paul: “The Out of Eden Walk walking partner family is diminished. Inayat Ali, my wise and humane walking partner in the remote Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, died last week, in his beloved mountains in Gilgit-Baltistan, of a heart attack. He was only 52.”
Text against a landscape scene says, "The Out of Eden Walk walking partner family is diminished. Inayat Ali, my wise and humane walking partner in the remote Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, died last week, in his beloved mountains in Gilgit-Baltistan, of a heart attack. He was only 52."
October 28, 2025 at 1:52 PM
outofedenwalk.social
✍️ We're happy to bring the Out of Eden Walk directly to your inbox. You can receive an email notification each time a new story goes live, or our roundup of community news, or both.

🗞️ Join our newsletters here: outofedenwalknonprofit.org/email-updates

Thank you for walking along! 🥾
We're bringing the stories to you. - Out of Eden Walk
We are happy to bring the Out of Eden Walk directly to your inbox. You can now receive an email notification each time a new story goes live, or our monthly roundup of community news, or both. Please ...
outofedenwalknonprofit.org
October 23, 2025 at 1:55 PM
outofedenwalk.social
Paul will join CBC Radio’s The Current with Matt Galloway this Thursday, Oct 23rd to discuss the latest steps in the Out of Eden Walk, a 38,000-kilometer journey across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

🎧 Listen to the conversation live on Thurs at 8:30 am EDT: www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...
Live Radio | CBC Listen
Radio One and CBC Music
www.cbc.ca
October 22, 2025 at 11:44 PM
outofedenwalk.social
Today at 11:15 am EDT, Paul Salopek is joining Ros Atkins on BBC Radio 4.

🎧🎙️ Listen live here: www.bbc.com/audio/play/l...

Out of Eden Walk is a 38,000-kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.
Screen grab of BBC World Service Radio 4 live listening site.
October 22, 2025 at 3:10 PM
outofedenwalk.social
"Longing. Nostalgia. Wanting. Aching. Thirst. A walker who comes from far away becomes a safe receptacle for such inconvenient emotions. We listen without judgment. We carry your secrets away."

Read Paul's latest dispatch from the trail in Japan: outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/goodbye-to-j...
Goodbye to Japan
1,500 kilometers through a landscape of desire.
outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org
October 17, 2025 at 12:30 AM
outofedenwalk.social
🎙️🎧 “As storytellers, if I sense a story is unfolding with the people I’m meeting, then I will share, ‘Hey, I just walked here from Ethiopia.’” — @paulsalopek.social to host Carolyn Beeler on @theworld.org

Listen or read along with “Small talk on the Eden Walk” here: theworld.org/stories/2025...
Black text against a white background with quotation marks says, “When people say, ‘Where do you come from?’ I sometimes say just the last village or maybe the last town. And that’s kind of extraordinary enough. Walking any distance these days is kind of unusual. And that will create a certain, ‘Oh, wow, that’s far.’ And, ‘Where are you going?’ … ‘I’m going to the next village up ahead.’ I don’t often say, ‘From Ethiopia. I just walked here,’ because you can imagine that kind of question that would then open up, right?” Black text against a white background with quotation marks says, “As storytellers, if I sense a story is unfolding with the people I’m meeting, then I will share, ‘Hey, I just walked here from Ethiopia.’ And that sparks a sense of wonder and curiosity that leads to, again, the kind of conversations that we can have a back and forth about their lives, too.” Black text against a white background with quotation marks says, “‘As I’ve gotten older as a reporter — and this is maybe not something that mainstream journalists do much — but I feel that if I’m going to be asking somebody about their story, they deserve to know something about my story. So, it becomes much more equal and not just this kind of harvesting other people’s stories. So, I answer as honestly as possible everything people ask of me. — Paul Salopek to Carolyn Beeler on ‘Small talk on the Eden Walk’ on public radio program The World.”
October 2, 2025 at 1:53 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“Japan I found steeped in yearning. Yearning, to be sure, might be the universal human condition: inescapable, without any particular geography. You experience it everywhere and often while walking through the world.” — @paulsalopek.social ✍️ outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/goodbye-to-j...
A vertical photo of a rainbow over a lake after a rainstorm. Birds dot the lake. The sky is gray, and there are hills in the distance. White text overlaid on the image says, “’Longing. Nostalgia. Wanting. Aching. Thirst. A walker who comes from far away becomes a safe receptacle for such inconvenient emotions. We listen without judgment. We carry your secrets away.’ —Paul Salopek, ‘Goodbye to Japan’. Pictured: A rainbow graces Lake Biwa after a rainstorm. Photo by Paul Salopek on the Out of Eden Walk.”
October 2, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Out of Eden Walk
theworld.org
#NatGeoExplorer @paulsalopek.social is walking from Ethiopia to Chile on the @outofedenwalk.social. But as he tells The World, “people are my destination.” The story of the walk unfolds through conversations he has with the people he meets along the way.
Small talk on the Eden Walk - The World from PRX
National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek is walking from Ethiopia to Chile on the Out of Eden Walk. But as he tells The World, "people are my destination." The story of the walk unfolds through conve...
theworld.org
August 25, 2025 at 11:50 AM
outofedenwalk.social
🎙️“Keep Myanmar in your heart, keep it in front of your eyes. Do whatever you can to help the people of Myanmar.” — @PaulSalopek

Paul recently joined the @InsightMyanmar Podcast. Listen to the conversation at the link below.

#WhatsHappeninglnMyanmar https://t.co/bRjKvP2Xg3
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“‘I don’t like this place,’ announces Jang Yikweon. We’re hiking in a pretty little valley in rural South Korea, Jang & I, traversing a storybook landscape of electric green rice paddies, cozy farming hamlets, mossy hill forests.” — @PaulSalopek Read more: https://t.co/BBiV25rNlD
Silence of the Frogs
Wading Through South Korea with a champion amphibian whisperer.
outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
🎙️“Keep Myanmar in your heart, keep it in front of your eyes. Do whatever you can to help the people of Myanmar.” — @PaulSalopek

Paul recently joined the @InsightMyanmar Podcast. Listen to the conversation at the link below. 🎧

#WhatsHappeninglnMyanmar https://t.co/GEtMVcRd6S
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“I’ve been offered shelter [&] food. People give me their stories, which are precious, right?... I’ve written: I wake up, & the word that comes to mind is ‘yes.’ Yes, I’ll do this another day.” @PaulSalopek (Begins @ 1:39:26 min) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0klm4lv @BBCSounds @BBCRadioLondon
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
🔈 “Keep Myanmar in your heart, keep it in front of your eyes. Do whatever you can to help the people of Myanmar.” — @PaulSalopek

🎙️ Paul recently joined the @InsightMyanmar Podcast.

Listen to the conversation here: https://t.co/2eer0PrKpo 🎧 https://t.co/jEnir4ukqR
Episode #311: Where the Streets Have No Name — Insight Myanmar
Chronicling acts of survival, mapping the resilience of communities, and portraying the spirit of protest
insightmyanmar.org
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
🎙️ “That’s what human beings are . . . we kind of have these qualities of mud within us.” — @PaulSalopek to @carolynbeeler. Listen or read along: https://t.co/zS3PvpJiXs This story is part of an ongoing series produced by @TheWorld in collab with Out of Eden Walk & @InsideNatGeo.
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“I started to think about what is mud after all, right? It’s earth, & it’s water & it’s motion. . . . Mud can’t just settle, or it turns into kind of stone after a while. It requires tides, requires movement. And I thought: That’s who we are. That is what life is.” — @PaulSalopek https:/...
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“Let it be known that I’m something of a connoisseur of convenience stores. This goes way back.” — @PaulSalopek

✍️ Read the latest dispatch from the trail in South Korea: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/articles/2025-02-cellophane-oasis #EdenWalk
Cellophane Oasis
Walking the modern Silk Roads through Asia, where caravanserais are reincarnated as convenience stores.
outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
🎙️🔉 Paul recently joined @TVNaga01 @bbc5live @BBCSounds for a conversation about Out of Eden Walk. Listen to the conversation, which begins at 02:12:55 mins, at the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027jsx @PaulSalopek #EdenWalk
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“A journey of 38,000-kilometers begins with a single step.”

🎙 Paul recently joined @radionz to talk about the Out of Eden Walk journey.

Listen to the conversation, “Retracing the first human migration,” at the link. 🎧

https://t.co/DN9v5LHvKF
Retracing the first human migration
A journey of 38,000-kilometers begins with a single step. 12 years ago this month, journalist Paul Salopek set off on a journey that follows the first human migration out of Africa, starting in the great Rift Valley in Ethiopia where the first human fossils were found with plans to end at Tierra del Fuego at the Southern Tip of South America. He calls the journey the "Out of Eden" walk with the support of the National Geographic Society. He sends dispatches from the road that tell the story of each place he goes. He speaks to Jesse today from somewhere in Japan.
www.rnz.co.nz
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
Families gather clams alongside the Daehang-ri shell mound, a prehistoric camping site near Saemangeum Seawall. Humans have harvested in the region since the Stone Age—a lifeway largely erased by a gigantic wetlands conversion: https://t.co/RNwi1LamHs 📷 Youngrae Kim @PaulSalopek
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“Mudflats are nature’s wallflowers: superficially charmless but with ecologically rich inner lives. They are also quite rare.” -— @PaulSalopek Read “Mud Mausoleum,” Paul’s latest dispatch from the trail: https://t.co/RNwi1LamHs Photo by Youngrae Kim. 📍 Saemangeum, South Korea
July 10, 2025 at 2:08 PM
outofedenwalk.social
🔈🎙️ “I walk with local people who add their own voices, their own insights, and therefore, it’s constantly being refreshed; the journey is constantly being made new.” — @PaulSalopek 🎧📖 Listen or read along with @TheWorld: https://t.co/vQwAhTIDP3 @MarcoWerman @StephenProducer
July 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM
outofedenwalk.social
“I struck my first ocean in 12 years at the coast of Dongbei—what used to be called Manchuria—in the frozen NE of China, almost a year ago. Stuffed inside a parka, I bent to pick up the burnished shingle on an empty shore.” —@PaulSalopek https://t.co/DqpMmmyfAa 📷 Zhang Qing Hua
July 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM
outofedenwalk.social
🔈“Our ancestors took more than 50,000 years, after kind of rambling out of Africa, with no destination in mind, right — this is before destinations had been invented — to reach the tip of South America. I might do it in 15 or 16 years.” —@PaulSalopek to @MarcoWerman on @TheWorld https://t.co/Dw...
July 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM
outofedenwalk.social
From Japan, the Out of Eden Walk marks 12 years, with North America on the horizon. @PaulSalopek is on a foot journey across the world. He provides an extraordinary record of humanity at a new millennium. Read more here: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/impact/article/paul-salopek-explorer-story
July 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM