The world today is enough to make some people want to get up and just run to the ends of the Earth, so that is what Kai Markus decided to do.
Troubled by what he sees as growing bigotry and division in the world, the German management consultant gave up a successful business to run the ancient Silk Road from Hamburg to Shanghai in a Quixotic quest to show that we are all one.
Nine months, eight countries, 12,000km and two fractured heel bones later, Markus on Saturday hobbled across a symbolic finish line in Shanghai with a feeling of mission accomplished.
Photo: AFP
“OK, the world is turning crazy, you have to do something,” the 45-year-old said. “If I want to talk about prejudice, I’m nobody, who will listen to me? So I thought about what I could do to wake up some people.”
Others have driven or biked from China to Europe, but Markus, whose wife is Chinese, could find no one who had run the route from sea to sea.
“Why not connect Europe and China along the Silk Road, which is in all people’s minds at the moment?” he said.
However, Markus is not a runner and he got far more than he bargained for on an odyssey chronicled on Instagram, Facebook and his Web site runmysilkroad.com.
Markus set out in March followed by friend Victor Neubauer, who drove a black 1984 Volkswagen Beetle towing a camper-van stuffed with protein powder, thousands of nutritional supplement pills and other supplies.
He ran in a freezing Russian spring and 52°C heat in China’s Taklamakan Desert, through painful shin splints and stomach ailments, and four dozen pairs of running shoes.
Markus once ran through the night in a sandstorm and nearly turned back several times when unforeseen costs or suspicious border officials blocked the way.
“They check more, because we came in with a fancy car and a stupid idea,” he said.
The first time he heard his now 18-month-old son say “Daddy” was on a bittersweet video call.
Halfway through China, their Beetle’s engine finally died. Its corpse is to be shipped back home.
Then, in late September, a stumble while running in Hubei Province broke both of Markus’ heel bones. The incident made Chinese state news, sent some sponsors fleeing and seemed like the end.
“But that’s not my style, and Victor, that’s also not his style,” said Markus, who spends most of his time in a recovery wheelchair.
With Neubauer gamely stepping in to run, they continued with a mix of running and other transportation, but only after the mulish Markus insisted on having his foot surgery in China, resisting family pressure to return home, because he felt it would betray the spirit of his “culture bridge” run.
The generosity of strangers kept Markus going, like the poor Belarus couple that slept on their sofa so the Germans could have their beds.
“No German would do that,” Markus said.
There were the imposing Russian police who pounded on their door one night, only so they could lead them to a safer parking spot.
Pictures from March show Markus with far more pepper in his now salt-and-pepper hair, but he has no regrets.
“Most importantly, [the run] brings us closer together. In a world like we have now, I think we need many, many more projects to bring people together instead of [separating] them,” he said.
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