lukebuehler.com About the life of a pilgrim

How Far to Walk (Some Numbers and Figures)

People ask me how far it is to walk to Jerusalem. It is hard to tell. I don't really know how to calculate such long routes and there are many unknown factors such as detours, dangerous areas, or special interesting places. Certainly I won't walk like a machine just having my route in mind. So the best thing is to compare to others that have done the thing I plan. I actually found only one person who did and he wrote a book about it. You can imagine how thirsty I read it. He walked pretty much along my alternative route starting in southern France. It took him about 8 months, there is no estimation about the distance.

Looking at some maps and comparing the known length of the pilgrim route of St. James (Jakobsweg) I would guess that the route is about 6500 Kilometers which breaks down to 27 Kilometers a day.

By the way the distance is about one seventh of the circumference of the earth (42000 / 6500 = 6.5).