with Valentin Macke
At 21 years old, Valentin Macke sets off: hitchhiking through Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, via Pakistan and India to Myanmar. How many cars picked him up or how many kilometres he covered, he does not know. For him, what counts are the encounters, which he engages with boundless curiosity. He walks with nomads across the Iranian highlands and learns painful lessons about freedom. He sleeps in snow caves and temples, as well as on trucks and on a high-rise construction site in Dubai. He hitches rides on tractors, snowcats and donkeys. He shakes the hand of a Taliban fighter just as he does that of the Dalai Lama. In the jungle he gets lost for days between warring tribes. In Balochistan he finds himself surrounded at night by armed men. He mastered the return through Afghanistan, Central Asia and Russia on an old bicycle.