“My name is Christoph Rehage, and I like to take walks sometimes.”

I was born a fat kid to a Hungarian mom and a German dad in Hannover on November 9th in 1981.

During my childhood, I spent my time mostly consuming adventure stories and setting things on fire. Later on, I ended up in Wichita, Kansas, for a year, then in Paris as a laborer, and eventually in Beijing, this time as a student of Chinese studies.

At some point in between, I spontaneously decided to walk home from Paris. Walking was both terrible and awesome at the same time, and I realized that this was something that I liked very much. More than reading. More than swimming. More than taking pictures, and probably even more than watching TV.

It was better than fire.

On the morning of my 26th birthday, on November 9th 2007, I started walking home from Beijing to Germany. I walked and I walked, growing a beard that got later called mighty by some and patchy by others, and then, after a year on the road, close to the border of Kazakhstan, I stopped walking.
I returned home to our village, made a video about the walk called “The Longest Way”, and posted it online. Little did I know that it would turn out to become a minor internet sensation.

And then it happened: I found something that I liked and feared more than walking – writing. I struggled with the pen and the paper for many a sleepless night, and eventually I came out of battle with two books: a travelogue (“The Longest Way”/ Malik: German) and a coffee table book (“China zu Fuß”/ National Geographic: German) about the walk.

The books did well enough for me to keep doing this. I am now working as a columnist for a Chinese newspaper, and my next book (“Chinese Characteristics”/ Contemporary China Publishing House: Chinese, a collection of the articles that I am writing there, has just hit the market in China last summer).

• Walking, okay, I get the idea. But I’m still a bit confused: from where to where did you actually walk? I started walking in Beijing on November 9th 2007, and I stopped in Ürümqi in northwestern China almost one year later, on October 25th 2008. Two years after that, in the summer 0f 2010, I walked a few hundred miles more, from Ürümqi to Usu. And in 2012, I went from Usu to Khorgas, the border checkpoint between China and Kazakhstan.

• How did you get the idea for the walk? I had walked from Paris to my home in Germany before – a walk of about 800 km that took less than a month. There were no metaphysical questions, no big worries, just pragmatic problems to solve: where to sleep, what to eat. It felt good, and it felt meaningful.

• Can you describe the process you undergo to prepare for a walking trip? I prepared for a year. Basically, it’s all about getting as smart as possible. I talked to German embassies all over the world, stumbled through map archives in several libraries, and read books, books and more books. Then I got equipped. Then I got vaccinated. Then I walked.

• What state of mind were you in when you were walking? It was just the way it would be on any normal day. Sometimes you think about stuff. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you worry about passports, dangers, pains, relatives and loved ones, and at other times your steps are light and you sing songs in the desert. Sometimes it’s boring. And sometimes you feel at peace.

• How many hours did you walk each day? I would usually feel comfortable walking 20 to 30 km in one day. That means I would have to be constantly moving for about 4 to 6 hours. Put in some breaks for picture taking, eating, resting, peeing, talking to people, wondering about the way, and I am on the road all day – but I didn’t walk every day.

• Why did you stop walking? I wanted to gain back my life. I had to regain control over myself, eliminate the inner boss that was telling me to keep walking. A lot of people look at the video thinking “I want to be free like that guy!” – but they don’t realize that I was driven by something, and maybe I was losing control over it.

• What is this something you are talking about? I think this something was partly my ambition and partly my principle. It seemed more and more like I was living to fulfill my ambition, and I was directed by principles that I had no way of changing. I didnt feel very free.

• What does it mean you were losing ( or better you had to regain) control of your life because of this experience?
  I had to emancipate myself from my ambition and from all principles. To become a free man again.