Exploration
This "regular guy" walked from Wales to Australia
And survived kidnappings, prison, panic attacks and -35 degree temperatures along the way...
Between 2012 and 2017, Arjun Bhogal spent five years walking across the world. Starting in Cardiff, Wales and finishing up in Cardiff, New South Wales, he traversed 20 different countries and raised over $4000 for a charity called WaterAid.
He named the trip ‘Border Walk’, and while walking 40km a day was hard work, he soon found that sourcing and carrying water was his biggest daily struggle. Clean water has become his passion – he wants it to be available to everyone.
On the phone, Arjun came across as an utterly regular 29-year-old guy. He studied film at university and, post-Border Walk, he was working in Australia for an NGO called Cultivator. He laughed while recounting stories about getting kidnapped, getting thrown in jail and surviving extreme temperatures from -35 to 52 degrees Celsius. After finishing his trip, Redbull.com caught up with him to get the lowdown on his adventure...
So you just spent five years walking across the world, can you have a go at summarising the trip?
I walked from Cardiff, in Wales, to Cardiff in New South Wales, Australia. It was originally supposed to take three years but as you'll find out, a lot of things went wrong. We ended up walking through 20 countries: Wales, England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and then Australia. I walked for the first year and a half with my friend Kieran, who came up with the idea with me.
Arjun's epic route
© Courtesy of Arjun Bhogal
And why did Kieran leave after a year and a half?
Well, we had some problems in Kyrgyzstan and ended up in jail for a few days because of corrupt police. They asked for our passports and we couldn't produce them because they were in the embassy — our visas for India and Pakistan were being processed. The police said they were going to hold us until we could produce our passports so they ended up holding us in a three-metre by three-metre cell with 18 other men sleeping on the floor; it was a strange few days but it was soon resolved.
After that, Kieran decided to go home and I ended up carrying on for the next three years solo. I met some people on the road who would join for me for periods, like two weeks or a month, but I was essentially alone until I got to Australia. That was when my friend Kieran came back and we did the last leg across the Nullarbor together.
It turned out that the Taliban knew of a British national walking through the area so the military came to get me before the Taliban could. It was a pretty intense few days.
Was it hard when Kieran left?
Yeah, it was the first time I'd been in another country travelling on my own, not knowing anybody. And the first time in the journey that I'd be going into the mountains. Annoyingly, it happened to be just as winter has arrived it was -35 degrees, I didn't have enough clothing and I was in the mountains alone in Kyrgyzstan. The physical side of it was OK — I found I could get up and walk 30 or 40km a day — but the hard part was the psychological thing. You're alone, not really speaking to many people because there aren't many people around.
A quick pit stop in the Ukraine
© Courtesy of Arjun Bhogal
So what were your sleeping arrangements like? When it’s -35 and you’re walking through the mountains, do you just find a random house, knock on the door and ask if you can crash?
Yeah, well if there's a door then you can knock on it [laughs]. But sometimes there aren't any people around and you just have to hunker down for the evening. Up in the mountains, I’d spend nights perched up on a mountain ledge next to the road. I’d try to sleep but end up spending most of the night awake — just horizontally.
But essentially the sleeping situations changed over the course of the trip. Through Europe we had bivvies, which are like swags but smaller, and you put your sleeping bag inside them. And then we had a tent through Kazakhstan and I had a hammock in Malaysia, which was pretty cool. We went back to having a tent in Australia. But yeah, we slept in truck stops and peoples’ homes and in ditches and, you know, weird places.
Sunset, snow and oncoming traffic
© Courtesy of Arjun Bhogal
And you used a cart to pull all your stuff around?
Yeah, in Belgium we had bicycle carts that we’d modified, with handles that you could push. A friend in Russia hand made a new cart and sent it out to us. But then when I got to Kyrgyzstan I couldn’t continue with that because I was going into the mountains. So I got rid of that and put everything on my back.
It really was a journey that was stitched together by people from all over the world. It wouldn’t have been possible without all the help we got along the way.
I read that at one point, you were in the desert and suffering panic attacks, nosebleeds and headaches. That sounds pretty rough.
Yeah that was because it was like 52 degrees and nothing grows above ankle height there, so there’s no shade or anything. You spend all day in the sun and it just gets way too much. So yeah, all those things start happening from extreme fatigue and exhaustion.
Settling in for a chilly night
© Courtesy of Arjun Bhogal
That sounds really rough, were there also some high points?
[Laughs] Yeah, it was great, genuinely. It really was a journey that was stitched together by people from all over the world. Literally, in every single country, from town to town, people were helping us with water and food and a place to sleep every night. It wouldn’t have been possible without all the help we got along the way.
So how did you afford to walk for five years without working?
Well, we came up with the idea while we were at university so we started saving then and we had donations from friends and family and also our sponsors. But we were living on $5 a day essentially. The main food was sandwiches, until we got to Asia, where food was reasonably cheap.
Arjun Bhogal cooking during a stop in Germany
© Courtesy of Arjun Bhogal
What was the craziest thing that happened on the trip?
I only managed to walk a third of the way through Afghanistan before I got kidnapped in the middle of the night — it sounds strange saying it out loud even now. But I was camping off the side of the road and suddenly seven men with AK-47s started running at me from different angles, screaming at me in Pashto [a language spoken in Afghanistan].
I didn't really know what to do so I just put my hands up. They kept screaming at me and then they handcuffed me and dragged me to the main road, went through all my stuff and put me in a 4x4. We were in the jeep for like 40 minutes and the whole time I'm just thinking, “I should have listened. I'm going to end up on YouTube getting beheaded or something”. 40 minutes later I’m chucked out of the car at a military checkpoint and I'm like, “thank god”.
I sat down with some military generals and we had a little chat with some interpreters. It turned out that the Taliban knew of a British national walking through the area so the military came to get me before the Taliban could. They gave me two options: I could either be deported back to the UK or they’d drive me to the Pakistan border. I chose the latter. It was a pretty intense few days.
What did you learn on the trip?
I learned that you don't have to be somebody special to achieve something great.
Well you’re walking 30 or 40km everyday so you spend a lot of time just walking on your own and thinking. You learn a lot about yourself. I learned that you don't have to be somebody special to achieve something great.
Keep up with Arjun on his website and Instagram.