Mateusz Waligóra Prepares to Walk Solo Through Gobi Desert
Mateusz Waligóra is about to emark on a 70-day, 1,800-kilometre walk through the Gobi Desert alone.
He will go without knowing whether after three days, when his water supply runs out, if he will find a well.
Dominik Szczepański, the expedition spokesman, did an interwiev with Waligóra and said that the trip will take place at the end of July.
It will be the first solo crossing of the desert.
Reinhold Messner, legendary climber who was the first to summit all eight-thousanders, attempted to cross the desert alone. He was often on a horse and accepted lifts from others.
“Gobi can not be won, because the look on this emptiness is almost unbearable,” he wrote later in the book Gobi.
Gobi is the largest desert of Asia and the second largest desert in the world, only the Sahara is bigger. Gobi has got extreme climate and a diverse terrain, with steppes, mountains reaching up to 4,000 metres, rocky debris and sand dunes.
The temperature can drop to minus 30 degrees at night and rise to plus 45 during the day. And then there are the hurricane winds, sandstorms and thunderstorms.
Waligóra plans to start his lonely expedition from the Mongolian and Chinese border in Bulgan, Khovd Province.
From there, his route goes east through the Altai mountains and the entire Gobi desert to Sainshand in eastern Mongolia.
He will pull a special cart with a tent, freeze-dried food, a water filter, navigation and communication equipment and solar panels.
The cart will also contain about 100 to 120 litres of water, a reserve that allows you to survive a week or so.
“I wanted to go to China to the Takla Makan desert, but the number of formalities, permits to attend is enormous,” said Waligóra.
“And Gobi is the second largest desert in the world after the Sahara. And so far no one has ever passed it alone, although many people have tried, for example, the famous climber Reinhold Messner.
?I’ve been preparing for the trip for three years, and for the last two years I know I’m going to Gobi. I crossed the largest salt desert in the world – Salar de Uyuni, I was in Patagonia, in Atacama. Salar makes the biggest impression. There is no life, no smells, no sounds and no water. Total emptiness and lack of any stimulus make the mind clean.
“Atakama is special to me because I started to overcome my fears there.” For more, visit his website here.
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