Sarah Marquis
| Sarah Marquis | |
|---|---|
 Sarah Marquis speaking on February 25, 2009 | |
| Born |
June 20, 1972 Montsevelier, Switzerland |
| Occupation | Adventurer, explorer |
| Website |
sarahmarquis |
Sarah Marquis (born June 20, 1972) is a Swiss adventurer and explorer. From 2010 to 2013, she walked 20,000 kilometres (12,000 mi) alone from Siberia to the Gobi Desert, into China, Laos, Thailand, and then across Australia. In 2011, she gave a TED talk[1] and in 2014 she was named one of National Geographic's Adventurers of the Year.[2][3]
Early life
Marquis was raised in Montsevelier, a village in the Canton of Jura in northern Switzerland.[4] Her father worked as a watchmaker for Swatch and her mother was a housewife, and she had two brothers.[5] She began exploring at a young age, and at sixteen years old she took up a job with a European train company so that she would be able to travel for free.[4] At age seventeen she traveled to Turkey, where she rode a horse across the Central Anatolia Region.[2]
Adventuring
Marquis cites a trip she took to New Zealand in her twenties as the first time she "actually got in touch with the wild": she spent a month in Kahurangi National Park without bringing any food. Her subsequent travels included canoeing through Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada, camping in Patagonia, and hiking the United States' Pacific Crest Trail.[4] In 2000 she walked border-to-border across the United States in four months, and she spent seventeen months of 2002–03 walking across Australia, covering a total distance of 8,700 miles (14,000 km). She hiked through the Andes of South America for eight months in 2006.[2]
In 2010, Marquis began a three-year-long solo walk from Siberia through Asia and, traveling by boat from Thailand, across Australia. During this time, she maintained little human contact and pulled a 120-pound (54 kg) cart that contained her clothes, equipment and supplies. She was forced to evacuate her route in Mongolia in 2011 after developing a periodontal abscess, but returned to her exact location when she recovered and continued the journey. Along the route, she was harassed by a group of Mongolian men on horseback, threatened by Laotian drug dealers, and contracted dengue fever.[4] To improve her safety, she sometimes disguised herself as a man and tried not to leave tracks so as not to be followed. She completed her journey in May 2013,[2] when she arrived at a particular tree in the Nullarbor Plain that she had identified on her previous trip to Australia.[4] In total, she walked for approximately 20,000 kilometres (12,000 mi) on her three-year journey.[5][6]
Marquis wrote a book, Sauvage par Nature ("Wild by nature"), in 2014.[4][6] She was awarded one of the National Geographic Adventurers of the Year prizes for 2014.[2]
References
- ↑ "TED 2011". TED (conference). February 28 – March 4, 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Adventurers of the Year: Explorer Sarah Marquis". National Geographic. 2014. Archived from the original on 25 September 2014. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- ↑ Clark, Jayne (15 November 2013). "Meet National Geographic's top adventurers of the year". USA Today. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Weil, Elizabeth (25 September 2013). "The Woman Who Walked 10,000 Miles (No Exaggeration) in Three Years". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 25 September 2014. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- 1 2 "Une journée avec Sarah Marquis". Elle. 25 November 2011. Retrieved 25 September 2014.
- 1 2 "Sarah Marquis, femme vs wild". Metro International. 21 May 2014. Retrieved 25 September 2014.