The Longest Way Home

To the majority of us walking home isn’t a challenge, it’s generally a moonlit amble after a few too many at the pub or making the conscience effort to add a little fitness into our everyday lives. But for some people, it can turn into the adventure of a lifetime - as it did for The Longest Way author Christoph Rehage.

Munich-based Rehage had already experienced his fair share of travelling including the United States, Frankfurt and Paris; the latter of which began his adventure - he spontaneously decided to walk home to Munich from France (that’s 830km according to Google Maps).

After his initial trip, he ventured to Beijing to complete another two years of his degree in language and cinematography, then decided to walk home from there too. On his 26th birthday, Christoph set off on his journey clean shaven and carefree, keen to soak up his surroundings and looking forward to learning more about himself, the world, and the people who live in it.

He documented his trip with a series of selfies (although a selfie wasn’t called a selfie back in 2007) as he walked from Beijing to Germany. With every image the landscape behind him transforms, the faces that surround him change and his beard grows ever longer. He created a film - entitled The Longest Way - from these travel shots which is rather hypnotising to watch; follow him as he travels through China, different girlfriends and environments.

After a year of beard-growing and walking, Christoph came to a dead end. He couldn’t walk anymore, his posts became distant, lonely and morose rather than upbeat, eager and willing to walk forever. He’s now settled back in Munich, still writing about his travels and working on getting a degree in China Studies and Russian literature in the future. That is, if he doesn’t decide to walk somewhere else in the meantime.