Explorers are constantly looking for new adventures and world firsts to accomplish. One mouthwatering, still-undone route is the longest continuous walk in the world.
In 2019, reddit user cbz3000 played around on Google Maps to find the longest route that you could walk without having to cross an ocean. Stretching 22,387km, it runs from Cape Town, South Africa to Magadan, Russia.
It crosses 16 countries: South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Sudan, Georgia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Romania, Belarus, and Russia.
The route ascends a total of 117,693m and descends 117,686m –- the equivalent of 13 Mount Everests. Google estimates that it takes 4,492 hours (187 days) to walk the entire distance, but in Google’s infinite wisdom, this is 24 hours a day, no breaks! More reasonably, if you walked eight hours a day, the walk would take 562 days to complete, not including rest days.
In the 1970s, Dave Kunst became the first person to walk completely around the earth. It took him four years. Steven Newman was the first to walk solo around the world. Fyona Campbell walked for 11 years across America, Africa and Europe, and Rosie Swale Pope ran around the world in 2003. The idea of walking across the world is not new, but this route is.
Perhaps the reason that this has never been attempted is the risk that accompanies it. The route is littered with visa restrictions, war-torn regions, civil wars, and unstable governments. Besides politics, anyone who attempted it would need exceptional skills to tackle the constantly changing terrain and temperatures.
Two years ago, ExplorersWeb reported on another straight-line route that two scientists suggested might be the longest continuous walk. But that was only 11,000km. This current one is twice as long.
