Wheelchair Trip II
371 Days from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska
Wheelchair trip
We challenged the route and, in doing so, challenged ourselves. For 371 days, we traveled in a Land Rover Defender, for which we designed and built a range of custom amenities. At first, when we told people about our plan, they thought we were crazy. Despite all odds, we embarked on the journey of a lifetime. Wheelchairtrip – thousands of kilometers through the wilderness of South America. The white sands of the Atacama Desert, a cruise down the Amazon to the heart of the jungle – Iquitos, Ayahuasca ceremonies, getting stuck in mud, tropical diseases, engine blowouts, and one goal: to prove that it's possible to conquer this grueling route while being disabled.
Idea:
When you embark on your first journey, it's difficult to truly end it, to reach your destination and return. A path once begun never truly ends. Each subsequent one seems like a continuation of the previous, each return home a mere transition, a time for preparation for the next trek. Perhaps one is always on the trail, no matter what.
Cell
When traveling, it's not just about reaching your destination. The journey itself is also the goal. Into the land, into yourself. Travel is always a learning experience – about yourself and about your relationships with others. As people with disabilities, we will certainly face many difficulties that we want to overcome, because the passion for travel is a matter of the mind, not the body. By undertaking this project, we want to show both people with and without disabilities that nothing is impossible. The desire to discover new worlds for us is more important than the hardship of the journey; this hardship is just an element of it, not an obstacle. We create obstacles for ourselves – through a lack of faith, imagination, and the desire to motivate ourselves.
First and foremost, it's about experiencing constant motion and thousands of images. It's about the silence and the rumble of the engine, about getting there and back. It's about getting to know others and understanding yourself. About distance and overcoming it. It's always also about the wheelchair and struggling with your own disability. With your own body and mind. It's about believing it's possible. And if it's not, it's about believing anyway.
„Step by Step from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska”
A book resulted from the expedition. It can be purchased at this address:
More about the expedition
Under this link, you can find dozens of articles describing the Wheelchairtrip Tierra del Fuego to Alaska expedition:
