Tidbit Tuesday-Walking

 How long does it take to walk a mile? How many miles can you walk in a day? A week?

When writing Husband of Convenience and Kaya and Paul's journey from Cairo to Damietta, I did a lot of research into that. Probably too much, but it's pretty cool what technology has shown us. For instance, I can go to any map app and type in Cairo to Damietta and find that it's 182 kilometers or almost 51 miles. Click on that little walking icon and its about 38 hours. 

On a modern road. And 38 hours is how long it'll take, eventually, there's no way you can walk that all at once. (Maybe you can but that seems extreme even for extreme sports!) You have to break it up, especially since you can't walk through the Sahara in mid-day.

The desert tribe tent Paul carries is used for daylight, when people rest in the desert sun. I went into detail on that in last week's post. Not that nighttime travel through the desert doesn't present it's own hazards.

So 38 hours. According to the CDC, the average person walks 2.5 to 4 mph. Paul is used to marching, Kaya is very much unused to that.

Not counting the time lost to the haboob. My estimate (my very rough estimate I've never walked this long or far) sets them at about 8 hours of walking, from sundown to before sunup, and with rests in between. They'd also need to set up their tent before the heat of the day became too much, and break it down before it became too dark. 

Maybe 7 days? Figure 7-9 days. There are always bursts of energy then the slowing down, so even at an average or 3 mph it's hard to sustain that pace.