Stupid idea and spirit of culture bridge created trail-blazing Silk Road runner
shanghai — The world today is enough to make some people want to get up and just run to the ends of the Earth, so that’s 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 hobbled across a symbolic finish line in Shanghai on Saturday with a feeling of mission accomplished.
“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 overland 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, referring to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s promotion of a revived east-west trade and cultural corridor.
But Markus — who won’t specify his politics to avoid riling sponsors — is not a runner, and he got far more than he bargained for on an odyssey chronicled via Instagram, Facebook and his website 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. —