Newsroom Cafe

28/01/2026

✍️ “I’ve spent the last 13 years walking 23,815 kilometers across the Old World, from the white thorn deserts of Ethiopia to the cobbled beaches of Japan. I can cite the distance with exactitude because I carry a hand-held GPS device.

Sometimes people ask me: Who do you meet along your global trail?

Many farmers and shopkeepers, I reply. Also poets, street sweepers, astrophysicists, yak herders, bonafide royalty, and beggars. And cops. Quite a few of security types, actually. They stop me everywhere to ask the usual questions. Whenever this happens, I quietly punch my GPS to mark each encounter. Voila: The Out of Eden Walk Police Stops Map. So far, along my erratic route out of Africa and across Eurasia, I’ve geotagged 120 interactions with police or military. Click on the map’s colored icons. You’ll see a brief description of each uneasy engagement and maybe a photo.

Originally, the idea of building a police-stop map seemed nearly a lark. Using GPS to plot my turtle-speed run-ins with law enforcement would be an interesting way, I thought, to chart freedom of movement in the societies traversed. Spatial analysis of police stops—from a hiker’s perspective—could also playfully skewer the hegemony of cars in our go-go era: Pedestrians have become less common and thus more suspect in the eyes of police these days, especially in affluent motorized economies.

But lately, looking ahead to the continental United States, where a new legion of poorly vetted and trained Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers masked in balaclavas is swarming American streets—and in the case of Minneapolis, shooting dead a citizen—I’m updating the map with considerably less whimsy. I’m an aging white dude: My police profile carries the most unearned privilege of any on the planet. Yet I’d permitted myself to believe, after crossing the Pacific Ocean by ship to trek down the length of the Americas, that the casual brutality of police states was at last behind me. Crossing the U.S. on foot will take about nine months. Let’s see what happens.”

— Paul Salopek

🔗 Read Paul’s latest dispatch, “Papers Please,” about mapping police stops on a walk across the world: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/papers-please

Linked within the dispatch is a new interactive map of these police stops.

Map by Jeff Blossom

Image description in comments.

28/01/2026

Former Editor of The Washington Post, Marty Baron, discusses the climate for journalists in America and around the world. Mahmood Mamdani tells the story of Uganda and its authoritarian leaders in his new book. He discusses that and his son, newly elected NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani. Paul Salopek has b...

20/04/2025

07/11/2024

27/10/2024

ძალიან მეწყინა მათიოს წასვლა ამ ქვეყნიდან.

“A decade ago, I crossed the Lesser Caucasus in the company of Matthieu Chazal.

I’d never met Matthieu before. The Frenchman was no alpinist. He was a photographer. He showed up one day at the lobby of my cheap hotel in the Turkish city of Kars, a bearded chain-smoker, rakishly handsome, his urbane smile utterly overthrown by fiery black eyes that belonged to an exiled revolutionary. Matthieu was absurdly underdressed. He wore a kaffiyeh scarf and leather street shoes. It was late November. The mountain temperatures never stirred above freezing. Miserably, we tried dodging blizzards on foot. Matthieu yanked shopping bags over his thin socks to keep his feet dry in snowdrifts. At one point, he armored himself against razored winds with plastic sheeting foraged from a garbage dump. ‘Don’t worry,’ whispered my colleague, the Kurdish photographer Murat Yazar, who’d invited this heedless caveman to our trail. ‘He will be gone in two or three days.’

Matthieu, it turned out, was an inspired walker.

He trekked with us for a month. Across 350 kilometers, he traversed the frozen steppes of Turkey to the white peaks of neighboring Georgia. Along the way, he beguiled every random human being we encountered: farmers numbed in winter hibernation, bored shopkeepers, even more bored prostitutes, skeptical border guards, alcoholic monks.” —Paul Salopek

🔗 At the link, read Paul’s new piece, “The Forgiving Moment,” about Walking Partner Matthieu Chazal, who roamed the turbulent margins of Asia and Europe, producing photos that belong to the ages. Now, so does he.

https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/articles/2024-10-forgiving-moment

Pictured: Matthieu Chazal, wrapped in plastic against the cold of the Caucasus mountains, leads a cargo mule named Kirkatir through the snow.

Photo by Paul Salopek.

Image description in comments.

28/09/2024

გარდაიცვალა ნიუსრუმ კაფელების ხშირი სტუმარი და მეგობარი - მათიუ ხაზალი. იგი იყო ძალიან საინტერესო და უბრალოდ, კარგიდ ადამიანი.
ნათეში იყოს მისი სული!!!

26/05/2024

გილოცავთ 26 მაისს, მათ მოგვიტანეს, ჩვენ უნდა გავაგრძელოთ და შვილებს გადავცეთ 🇬🇪Newsroom Cafe

04/03/2024

An exclusive interview with Paul Salopek from China. Lydia Swinscoe talks to Paul over video link where he discusses his Out of Eden Walk

29/02/2024

“In the stillness of the night, even within the depths of a dream, the sound of the Yellow River's waters could be heard, along with the occasional clucking of pheasants flapping their wings as they flew by. When I awoke in the morning and emerged from the tent, the sun was still hiding behind the mountain to the east, but the sky was already bright. Lifeng, Kankan, and Luo Ying were preparing hot tea and bread; Paul had already taken down his tent and backpack and was sitting on the ground, writing notes.”—Luo Xin

Read our newest Lab Talk, or guest dispatch, “The Yellow River Falls From the White Clouds,” written by Luo Xin: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/blogs/lab-talk/2024-02-yellow-river-falls-white-clouds

Luo Xin is a professor of medieval history at Peking University. He walked with Paul in several provinces in southwestern and northern China in 2022 and 2023.

Liu Kankan, a writer, translator, and editor based in Dali, in Yunnan Province, has walked with Paul and helped translate this essay from Mandarin to English.

Pictured: Rest with a purpose for the Out of Eden Walk's master notetaker.

Photo by Luo Xin. Image description in comments.

26/02/2024