In April 2009 we met Masahito Yoshida at a tiny shop/gas station in the middle of the desert in western China. (Xinjiang Ughyar Atonomous Region). He is Japanese, now 30 years old, a mechanical engineer. He had taken the boat from Japan to Shanghai, and begun walking westward from there. He walks along the roads, pulling his gear in a small cart: Total weight about 50 kg.

At that point, he'd been on the road about 4 months, and told us he was headed "to London." We were on an 11 month bike trip from Bangkok to Paris at the time. Brief encounters with other travellers are always interesting, and I often wonder whether we'll meet again. We exchanged contact information. I post the story of his journey here with his permission, as his English is limited.

Masa contacted us later that year, and we kept up an email exchange. He walked across China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. His belongings were stolen by gypsies in the Ukraine, although the police helped him recover nearly everything. He spent a week in a Bulgarian hospital and almost lost three fingers to frostbite. He reached Cabo da Roca, Portugal,(westernmost point in Europe) in August 2010, then flew from Lisbon to Philadelphia.

He couldn't get a sufficiently long term visa to walk across the USA, so he walked from Atlantic City to Ottawa and on to Toronto where he worked for six months and waited out the winter. He then walked across Canada to Edmonton, Jasper, the Icefields Parkway, Revelstoke, Lillooet, Whistler and arrived in Vancouver on October 4th, after 2 years and 9 months, 1007 days on the road.

GreyBeard met him, as we'd arranged, in West Van and walked across Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park, and to our house with him. So far he has walked 22,000 km! He crossed much of Canada using the Trans-Canada Highway, and he covers around 50 km a day.

This morning we drove Masa to Vancouver airport for his departure to Melbourne, Australia. He plans to walk northwards through the centre of Oz to Darwin. The last part of his journey will be from Singapore, back to his starting point in Shanghai.

Why does he do it? ‘I like to walk. I like to visit small villages and meet the locals.' As a touring cyclist, I can understand his motivations.

If you would like to read more about his adventures and look at his pictures see his blog at http://alkinist.blog111.fc2.com/
Unless you can read Japanese, use your browser's translator to get a very rough idea of the text. The blog name "Alkinist" is a blend of the words "alpinist" and "aruku"("walk" in Japanese).

In reference to the Canadian part of his journey he says simply:
"I like Canadian people. I like Canadian nature. I like Tim Hortons."

We introduced him to a different kind of walking while he was with us, as you can see by GreyBeard's two trip recent reports:
https://www.clubtread.com/sforum/topi...TOPIC_ID=41540
https://www.clubtread.com/sforum/topi...TOPIC_ID=41539


These are the boots he wore up Panorama Ridge in the snow!
They are the fifth pair of his journey, and he's getting a new pair sent to Melbourne by his sponsor.

GH

AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Great story!!!!!! Glad he's getting new boots!!!!!!!!

I like it, absolutely wonderful!

I love that he crossed paths with Jean Beliveau. What a great journey.

Walking 22,000+ km, and in the pics he looks to be the happiest guy in the world. Wow.

What an incredible journey! I like walking but to walk the places and distances he has. I think someone should make a movie of this!

That's unbelievable!

Wow! I imagine he has some spectacular stories to tell. Very cool[8D]

Years ago I met a couple of fellows from the states that were hiking through trail systems where ever they could going from as close to one pole to as close as they could hike to the other pole. They had left Alaska and were hiking to the southern tip of South America and then planed to do that on each continent around the world.
They sent me a letter asking for a donation to continue there hike through South America.

This fellow made an incredible trip especially with his limited english.

WOW! Everyone should have a chance to do this, or even a small segment.

Domo Arigato. Awesome! Makes me wanna get out travelling again. Course, doesn't take much to do that.

Some people have an extraordinary amount of time on their hands - what would you do if had 11 years to spend on a pet project? :

http://montreal.ctv.ca/servlet/an/lo...6?hub=Montreal

Fantastic story as a whole, but especially the part you introduced to him the Hanover hike-scrambling!

Masahito flew from Vancouver to Melbourne, Australia, in mid-October.
He's currently in Adelaide, having walked 700+ km from Melbourne. He's staying with friends of ours in Adelaide.

Here is an article that was published about Masa in the Melbourne Herald:


Now he has 4000+ km on the Stuart Highway to Darwin. He likes deserts, and told us he really wanted to cross the Sahara, but he decided on the centre of Australia instead because he realized things were currently too politically unstable in North Africa.

GH

That's amazing! So lucky you met him in your own travels. Cool [8D]