For those who have ever tackled a six-hour hike, climbed a mountain, or even just taken on a few flights of stairs, you can start to grasp how challenging it would be to walk around the globe.
There are countless ways to circle the world, and opting to do it on foot must be among the most demanding. However, that’s precisely what Steven Newman accomplished, covering 15,509 miles on his journey.
In April 1983, Newman embarked on a solo trek from Ohio, venturing through 21 countries over four years, before finally returning home in April 1987.
Two years post-trek, he shared with the New York Times: “I don’t really like walking that much. I just knew if you wanted some stories, go for a walk.”
But how did this journey come to be?
On his website blog, Newman revealed that his ‘dream of walking around the world was born in a nine-year-old’s excitable mind’.
He expressed: “It was during one of those frequent southern Ohio rainy afternoons, when my imagination was lost in the pages of a stack of old National Geographic magazines.
“Though the covers of that dignified periodical may have been worn and faded at the time, the beauty of the glossy photographs inside was still unmistakably very much alive.
“I knew then and there that someday I had to visit all those exotic lands and meet all those smiling faces.”
In 1987, he explained to PEOPLE his motivation for the expedition was to determine if the world was as dire as some claimed.
He stated: “[It] was a great curiosity to see what the common people of the world were like. Walking is the best way because you are one-on-one with people.
“We also hear so much about how dangerous the world has become and how it’s falling apart socially, morally, whatever. I had this deep urge to find out if it was really such a terrible place as everybody was saying.”
So, what was his conclusion after his global walk?
Newman decided: “They were totally wrong.”
He also conveyed to The New York Times: “The world is a better place than we give it credit for. There are more good people than bad, even in areas that are dangerous.”
Nevertheless, during his journey, he did face some frightening experiences.
According to PEOPLE, Newman mentioned that he ‘was arrested four times during his journey, attacked twice by armed bandits, stoned by students in India (who thought he was English) and beaten by a drunken construction worker in the Australian outback’.
He also dealt with encounters involving ‘wild boars, bull ants, a poisonous snake, fleas and disgruntled bison’.
Later, Newman documented his adventures in a book titled ‘WorldWalk’.