It has been a few months since I last checked in on Rob Lilwall and Leon McCarron, those crazy adventurers who have been Walking Home From Mongolia since last November. In this case “home” refers to Hong Kong, a destination that is more than 5000km (3106 miles) away from where the trek actually began.
Rob and Leon have now been traveling for nearly five months and they have made considerable progress towards their goal, although there is still plenty of distance to cover if they hope to finish up in May as they have planned. Their journey began in Ulaanbattar, the capital of Mongolia and continued Southeast to Hohhot in China. From there, the duo had planned to use inflatable kayaks to paddle parts of the Yellow and Pearl Rivers, but those waterways were frozen solid and prevented them from launching. Undaunted, the men carried on to Xi An, where they rested for a time before resuming their travels. They are no en route to Guilin, their last major stop before proceed on to the finish line in Hong Kong.
The expedition’s blog has been updated on a regular basis and contains lots of good information about the trek. It seems the winter was a cold and challenging one for Rob and Leon and yet they have managed to put the worst of it behind them and they are now enjoying spring in China. They are planning on paddling the last leg of the journey from Guilin to Hong Kong, and something tells me they’ll have no problems accessing the water on that phase of their journey.
If you’re looking for some good reading on an on-going adventure, then you’ll definitely want to check out the Walking Home From Mongolia website. Good luck to the boys as they enter the home-stretch.
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A very long walk this is!