國家地理:一次翻越世界屋脊的歷史性旅行(1)

Her hair was dyed purple. She wore spandex. She was dancing alone, the young foreigner, swaying barefoot on the roof of a car parked at an utterly remote frontier in the rocky core of Asia, hard beside the Panj River that saws Tajikistan from Afghanistan -- a notorious opium smugglers' paradise at the southern edge of the Pamir mountains. The car had EU plates. But who was she? A belated pilgrim on the old hippie trail? A mystic? An addict? A tourist? An adventurer? It was impossible to know.

她的頭發(fā)染成了紫色。她穿著緊身衣。她獨自跳著舞，這位年輕的外國人赤腳在一輛小車的車頂上搖晃著，車子停在亞洲巖核中十分偏遠(yuǎn)的邊境地區(qū)阿富汗一側(cè)，緊靠噴赤河，與塔吉克斯坦隔河相望--帕米爾高原南部邊緣一個臭名昭著的鴉片走私者的天堂。這輛車有歐盟牌照。但她是誰？是古老嬉皮士小道上遲到的朝圣者？一個神秘的人？一個癮君子？一個旅游者？一個冒險家？誰也不知道。

I raised my sweat-pickled hat in greeting as I shuffled past, chivying a tired cargo donkey, wind-chapped, and hollow-bellied from camping more than a month among the crags of Central Asia. I am walking across the world. For five years I have been pacing off the Earth as part of a project called the Out of Eden Walk, a storytelling pilgrimage along the pathways of the first ancestors who explored the planet during the Stone Age. To walk in this way -- continuously, day after river, month after continent, over a route that eventually will span 21,000 miles -- is to inhabit a state of daily wonderment. So the wilderness dancer was not really a surprise. Nor did I startle her. She didn't see me. Lost in the techno beats punching out of her car's stereo, she never even opened her eyes.

我慢吞吞地走過去，舉起我滿是汗?jié)n的帽子打招呼，趕著一頭在中亞峭壁之間露宿一個多月、遭受凜冽寒風(fēng)、空著肚子爬山過河的疲憊駝著貨的驢。我正在徒步穿越世界。5年來，為實施“走出伊甸園”計劃，我一直在一步一步地丈量著地球，那是沿著石器時代第一批探索這個星球的先祖?zhèn)兊穆窂降闹v故事式朝圣。連續(xù)地日復(fù)一日、月復(fù)一月，跨河渡海，最終走完21000英里的路程，這種方式徒步旅行每天都有新奇驚嘆的狀況，因此這位荒野舞者真的不是一個驚奇。她沒有看我，我也沒有驚嚇?biāo)?。她迷失在汽車音響發(fā)出的高科技舞曲節(jié)奏里，根本沒有睜開過眼睛。