“Our first day in Tajikistan saw us bumping and grinding our way down the Pamir Highway in a decrepit Lada driven by two young soldiers from Dushanbe. As I peered through tinted windows at the Chinese border fence cutting an arbitrary line through this expansive wilderness, I thought
it comical how, amidst the pristine snow-capped peaks and uninhabited plateau, our little car was an absurd microcosm of the modern world – the stench of tobacco smoke and vodka breath mixing with ear-splitting Uzbek techno and the soldiers’ conversations of missing their girlfriends in the capital.”

“Nevertheless, we eventually got underway, loaded up Salomon’s boat and headed north into the Arctic Circle, weaving our way through the Ammassalik Fjord and east through a labyrinth of smaller fjords and channels set amongst sweeping walls of rock and jumbled glaciers that slithered erratic paths through untrammeled peaks. Patches of sea mist hung in the still air, and occasionally we heard the groaning and fracture of icebergs over the puttering diesel engine. After 10 hours, we pulled into the Kangertittivatsiaq fjord and caught our first glimpse of the cirque.”

“This wasn’t the first time that Martin had attempted this audacious trip. In 2011, he planned to walk to China by crossing the partially frozen Bering Sea — no easy feat, because of the need to hopscotch over fast-moving pack ice. Aside from the Siberian Yupik people who were the first to cross the Bering land bridge at the end of the last Ice Age, less than half a dozen teams have made it across on foot. German Max Gottschalk was the first documented person to cross the strait, by dogsled rather than by boat, in March 1913, from Siberia to Shishmaref, Alaska.”

“Heyerdahl argued that the Polynesian Triangle — formed by the three island groups of Hawai’i, Easter Island, and New Zealand at its corners — was first settled by early voyagers unintentionally drifting on the easterly prevailing wind and currents. He reasoned that going against these natural forces would have required more advanced boat design and navigational skills than was available at the time. In 1976 the Polynesian Voyaging Society disproved this theory by piloting the Hōkūleʻa — a traditional double-hulled voyaging canoe — for 4,400km from Hawai’i to Tahiti. On board was Micronesian Pius “Mau” Piailug who navigated the entire distance without instruments and by reading the night sky and ocean swells.”