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U2 was here—and so were thousands of fans who managed to find the remote Mojave Desert location of the very Joshua tree depicted in the photo series accompanying U2's 1987 album. The tree has died and now lies in brittle bits and pieces. Photo by Steve Hall.

Satellite views of the Earth plus the advent of digital photography and remote communication technology have rendered virtually no place on the planet unexplored—or unseen, anyway. To be an explorer in the old days was a legitimate and noble occupation, but traveling today is much less about first-time discovery than it is about rediscovery. But there is a particular thrill in going where certain others have gone before, to walk where they walked and to know that their eyes, too, played across the very landscape before you. So forget the world’s last lingering corners of wilderness for a moment, or the last unsettled islands, and consider these special sites of interest where writers, artists, musicians and heroes once walked:

The toppled Joshua tree. On a cold December day in 1986, the biggest budding rock band of the time—a group of young Irishmen known as U2—walked into the Mojave desert with photographer Anton Corbijn, posed before a lanky-limbed Joshua tree and created one of the most famous rock and roll image galleries, portrayed on the album sleeve of U2′s 1987 album The Joshua Tree. The images spurred a quiet pilgrimage of followers seeking to locate the Joshua tree—the Joshua tree, that is, the one shown on the album. The site is located near Death Valley, and presumably the first U2 fan to locate the place found it by following the skyline seen in the famed black and white photographs. Today, the tree itself lies fallen and broken, while a shrine and plaque, a variety of stone-based artwork and four stone circles indicating where each U2 band member once stood still give visitors a chilling sense of rediscovery.

The Slaughtered Lamb pub. “I vote we go back to The Slaughtered Lamb.” So said Jack Goodman, played by Griffin Dunne, to his friend David Kessler in the 1981 horror cult classic An American Werewolf in London. Two young American men, students on vacation, were walking on the cold, wild moors of Northern England not far from a fictional village called East Proctor. The pair had just left the town’s spooky village pub, The Slaughtered Lamb, where a bizarre cast of locals sent the Americans packing with crazy talk suggesting monsters and witchcraft. But some distance out of the town, piercing half-man howls echoed through the fog and scared Jack and David back again toward the pub—but a werewolf got them first. Jack was killed, and David, played by David Naughton, was rendered a once-per-month monster whose own days would soon end after a bloody rampage in the streets of London. Today, the village of Crickadarn, Wales, which portrayed East Proctor, remains a vaguely known source of attraction for traveling film buffs. If you go, stick to the road, keep clear of the moors and take some good pics—and perhaps post driving directions in the comment box below. Heads up: The interior of The Slaughtered Lamb is actually in The Black Swan, a pub in Ockham, Surrey, in case you should want a pint.

Cephalonia, home island of Odysseus. Just which Aegean waters Homer’s hero stirred and which Greek islands he passed as he voyaged home from Troy may be unclear, but we may know just where Odysseus landed at the journey’s end, the island he called home. Named Ithaca in The Odyssey, the home island of Odysseus is believed to be that now called Cephalonia, off Greece’s west coast, as described in Smithsonian in 2006. An amateur scholar named Robert Bittlestone made this claim after studying translations of Homer’s narration and touring possible islands in Greece, surveying the landscapes and imagining just where was the likeliest abode of Odysseus. The modern-day island of Ithaca seems not to be the old Ithaca—but on Cephalonia, Bittlestone believes he can even trace the footsteps of Odysseus from the moment he came ashore at Phorcys Bay to the hut of the benevolent swineherd to—at last—the cone-shaped hill called Kastelli, where Odysseus’ wife Penelope and their son Telemachus endured for years the hounding of suitors and drunkards—men who died in a bloody, skull-crashing fight when Odysseus finally walked through his door. Should you go to Cephalonia, bring along a pair of binoculars and a copy of the Odyssey, perhaps the truest guidebook there is to this lesser-known Greek island.

Cephalonia, off of western Greece, might be the island where Odysseus—or his real-life prototype—lived. Photo courtesy of Flickr user The Photo Factory by Christel Egberts.

Fairbanks City Bus 142. The broken-down bus in which a young man lived his final days in Alaska in 1992 has become an attraction for back-country visitors in recent years. Made famous by Jon Krakauer in his 1995 book Into the Wild, Chris McCandless, who took up the alias Alexander Supertramp, has been the subject of scorn, sympathy and admiration. He came to the interior Alaskan bush country with idealistic visions of living off the land in a place void of human contact and government control—but things didn’t go well. Though he had a rifle, he failed to feed himself adequately, and after more than 100 days in the wild, he died of starvation inside the retired Fairbanks city bus. McCandless’ tribe of followers exploded in numbers following the 2007 movie adaptation of Krakauer’s book, and today many—too many, perhaps—visit the bus each summer and fall, posing for photos exactly as McCandless did, signing their names inside the bus and taking pieces away. Locals have begun to consider the defunct vehicle an attractive nuisance. Though the bus has long served as a campsite for local hunters, there has been talk of removing it from the bush. Go see this piece of junk while you can.

Steinbeck Country. It’s sunburned, desolate and populated by pigs and cougars—and everywhere you go in the hill country of California’s Monterey and San Benito Counties, you are likely to be viewing the same wild country that inspired the writing of John Steinbeck. While you have a sure bet at mingling with the ghosts of Steinbeck’s past at tourist hubs like Cannery Row, the real excitement lies farther afield—where one might explore the scrubby back country and ask of suspect homesteads, trees and road crossings: “Was Steinbeck here?” Eight years ago while exploring California on a long bicycle tour, this very question came to me, along with a strange and eerie feeling in my gut, when I came upon a lonely intersection in Monterey County, far from any stores or farms or gas stations. I was riding northward on Peach Tree Road, parallel to and east of the Salinas Valley, and came to the junction with Long Valley Road, which led deep into the hill country to the west. I instantly recalled Steinbeck’s The Long Valley and felt with certainty that the author had walked up this road in its unpaved days, through these dry expanses of classic California oak and scrub, absorbing impressions of the land that would later move him to write. But in the lonely hills of Steinbeck Country, fiction overlays reality, and whether here once was a god unknown, or a red pony, or a man named Adam Trask—who really knows but the writer who invented them all?

There are many other literary journeys, sites to see and paths to follow:

Jack Kerouac‘s route in On the Road. Kerouac disguised many of his real-life characters with clever pseudonyms in On the Road, yet travelers and journalists seem to have pinned down where he went, drank, ate and slept, from San Luis Obispo to Colorado to New York.

The pond and cabin of Henry David Thoreau‘s Walden days.

The Overlook Hotel of The Shining. Film director Stanley Kubrick relied on multiple locations, including a set in England, for shooting his 1980 horror hit, but for a face-to-face, head-on look at the hotel that swallowed up the Torrance family for a long, frightening winter, head straight to the Timberline Lodge in Oregon.

The Abbey Road crossing in London as seen on the Beatles album. Should you go, take three long-haired friends, set up a camera and don’t forget the most important part: One of you must walk barefoot.

The Fairbanks city bus in which Chris McCandless died of starvation in 1992 has become a tourist attraction. This photo was taken in 2011. Photo by Dave Korn.

Meadows, lakes, snow and granite are the enduring elements of California's John Muir Trail, which leads through 211 miles of some of the world's most beautiful alpine wilderness. Photo courtesy of Flickr user peretzp

After cycling for weeks, now I’m thinking about walking. Foot travel has been the way of the wayfarer since men and women were still dragging their knuckles. The fact that people still opt to walk today, in the age of the wheel and the combustion engine, tells us there is something virtuous and irresistible in the plodding of one foot forward after the other. And without question, walking works. Using their legs and feet, many people have moved thousands of miles overland, and in many places the trails they wore in the earth are used by modern recreational trekkers who follow in the footsteps of their forebears. Following are five of the world’s great walks—with more to come next week.

Appalachian Trail. Leading 2,181 miles through 14 states and the historic forests and backwoods shanties of Appalachia, the Appalachian Trail was conceived in 1921, and by 1937 it was ready for walking. Today, 4 million people walk parts of the trail every year. Those attempting a through-hike number in the thousands, and only one in four finish. From Maine’s Mount Katahdin to Georgia’s Springer Mountain, the whole package takes as long as six months as hikers accumulate a total elevation gain equal to climbing Mount Everest 16 times.

John Muir Trail. This path through the high Sierra Nevada of California immortalizes the landscape that naturalist John Muir worshiped. And at just 211 miles long through beautiful alpine country, it’s both epic and doable. From the south, the JMT begins at the lower 48 states’ highest peak, Mount Whitney; crosses mountain passes more than 13,000 feet in elevation; traverses some of the world’s most beautiful high altitude wilderness; never touches a road and finally lands hikers in one of the world’s most esteemed natural places, Yosemite Valley. The trail generally requires three weeks from start to finish. If you happen to have a little extra time on either side, you could walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, of which the JMT is just a small part.

Coast to Coast Walk. A walk that doesn’t demand superb physical condition or half a year to complete, this 220-mile path crosses Northern England and leads through the evergreen verdure of the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors National Parks, from the Irish Sea to the east coast of England. Writer and walking enthusiast Alfred Wainswright devised the trail and suggested that hikers touch their toes in the Irish Sea at St. Bees before starting and step right into Robin Hood’s Bay after 10 or 20 days of trudging. Or else it doesn’t count.

Great Wall of China. No, you can’t really see it from space. That was a myth more or less debunked in the past decade or so by astronauts. However, while the Great Wall of China no longer plays a role in international affairs, it makes one heck of a walking platform. Unlike the heavily trammeled Camino (see below) or Appalachian Trails, the Great Wall demands ingenuity, craftiness and durability in anyone who attempts to plod the length of it, which is broken, crumbled or gone in many sections. Australian Mark Scholinz walked the wall in 2007. He encountered frozen steppe country, wolf tracks, endless hospitality and a whole lot of rice and tea.

Camino de Santiago. Once a path of the pious, this European network of trails converges toward its terminus as it leads many thousands of walkers each year to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. Though founded by deeply religious pilgrims more than a thousand years ago, “the Camino” today is simply a recreational venture for most making the pilgrimage. It is also hardly an adventure anymore, as every step of the way has been walked a million times before, with many miles of pathway paralleling freeways and cutting through suburbs and farmland. One highlight of the trail is certainly the Cruz de Ferra, a 25-foot-tall cross which pilgrims have built by depositing knickknacks and trinkets and stones. Today, the rockpile is is almost 20 feet high, a sacred midden built over centuries. It’s truly a wonder just to touch it.

The Cruz de Ferra, surrounded by an ancient mound of stones left by pilgrims, is one of the marvels to be found along the Camino de Santiago. Photo by Alastair Bland

Reading About Walking:

Don’t feel like walking the walk? The armchair is one of the comfiest vehicles of travel we have. You’ll need a good book, and here are several classics of adventure travel.

The Snow Leopard. In this sober account, we find author Peter Matthiessen to be a man of Buddhism, western science, literature and a love of big cats. In 1972, when biologist George Schaller invited him on a 200-mile trek into the Himalaya to track the rare blue sheep, Matthiessen, now in his mid-80s, accepted, unable to resist the opportunity to see a snow leopard. It was the fall, and their trip led into one of the most mysterious, dangerous yet peaceful regions of the world under blue skies and a warm sun. By November, frostbite and blizzards were ever-present dangers. The two Americans, accompanied by Sherpas and porters, do eventually see the blue sheep, while all along the high and rocky trails lurk the haunting signs of the snow leopard.

Danziger’s Travels. English author Nick Danziger points out early in this book that he was not interested in walking a record distance or cycling across a continent when he took up the old trade route of the Asia-to-Europe silk traders. Rather, he utilized whatever local means of travel were available in China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey—and often he was walking. Danziger’s travels lasted 18 months, for part of which time he went disguised as a Muslim. The book is an adventure account almost as simple as the travel genre gets, but few are better.

The Places in Between. Journalist Rory Stewart walked for 16 months through Iran, Pakistan, India and Nepal in 2000 and 2001. Then, in the virulent months following the September 11 attacks, he found himself facing Afghanistan. The month he spent walking across it would produce, eventually, one of the best modern travel books I’ve found. Stewart survived on the food and shelter of kind strangers, but many Afghans, hardened by war and the desert, were downright vicious. Stewart was determined to walk, and he firmly refused rides across known danger zones. For part of the way, a trio of Afghan soldiers escorted him. But it’s the many miles he walked alone (and with a great shaggy dog adopted along the way) that make readers marvel, at times, that Stewart lived to write about the trip.

A Walk in the Woods. He’s pudgy. He’s brainy. He has a strange penchant for stupid knickknacks and trivia from his Americana Midwest childhood. And for some reason, late in the 1990s, he decided to walk partway across America. In the end, comic Bill Bryson only completed, in bits and pieces, 800-some miles of the Appalachian Trail, but it was enough to provide him with the fodder he needed to write one of the funniest travel books of our time.

Andrew Bland, brother of the author, shivers and shakes after a frigid abalone, or paua, dive in Akaroa Harbour.

At least 48 earthquakes rattled Christchurch on January 2. People here are losing track as the ground keeps shaking and fears of more big temblors have them walking on their tiptoes. In the city center, the devastation from last February’s 6.3 quake remains plain, as condemned buildings stare bleakly over the nervous city. And with the memories of that deadly day still vivid, two more large earthquakes struck Christchurch on December 23, and on the second day of this year the shaking hardly stopped at all.

“We haven’t slept much in the past 24 hours,” said a weary-eyed cashier at the airport currency exchange office as she handed me a few bills and tried to produce a smile.

But for my brother, my parents and me, January 2, 2012 was a day of no consequence. In fact, it never happened. Somewhere between leaving San Francisco on the first, flying west and crossing the International Dateline, January 2 vanished; we arrived on the third.

We rented a car and left the city immediately—not that we were following the advice of blogger Bridget Gleeson, who recently listed Christchurch as one of 11 places in the world not to visit. No, Andrew and I simply wanted to get checked in to our hostel, put on our wetsuits and get in the water with time to catch dinner’s main course. So we drove east in our Subaru wagon, hugging the left side of the road as we wound outward onto the Banks Peninsula, toward a small seaside town called Akaroa. From here the road turned sharply uphill for the final miles and ended at the Onuku Farm Hostel, a green and grubby little cluster of shacks, huts, outhouses and hammocks, all clinging to a 30-percent slope about 700 feet above sea level.

Andrew and two of the Onuku Farm Hostel's permanent residents.

Andrew and I grabbed our wetsuits, spears and snorkeling gear and scrambled down the mountainside. The woods were thick with ferns, eucalyptus and strange native trees that doubled over periodically when enormous green New Zealand pigeons settled upon their branches. Sheep grazed abundantly, making for scenery like Scotland’s—yet the green hills gave me a bizarre feeling that, at any moment, a pterodactyl or tyrannosaur might suddenly appear through the treetops. For there is a prehistoric strangeness in the wilds of New Zealand, and I think I have pinned it down: It’s the absence of native mammals, except bats and pinnipeds, which gives the impression that one is walking in the age of dinosaurs.

At the water’s edge, we suited up and jumped in. It took a moment to adjust to the shock of the cold before we could begin diving—and we had to hunt for our paua fast, as we wouldn’t last long in this frigid sea. The water was murky, and at the bottom we sifted through the kelp and vegetation, looking for the small abalone clamped to the rocks. The larger ones we pried off using butter knives, and we filled our bags. We looked for fish, too; Andrew saw a large trevally dash past him in the glacial green shadows, and large wrasse slipped through the cloudy water, in and around kelp fronds like phantoms haunting a forest. But we speared none and, after 30 minutes, crawled from the water a few degrees from hypothermic. We shivered ourselves warm again in the summer sun before hiking back up the mountainside to the hostel. Paua require some diligent preparation, and we spent an hour in the open-air kitchen clubbing the snails’ feet with beer bottles to tenderize them for the frying pan. We began cooking at 8:00, when the sun was still high, and it only got fully dark by 10:00. By then we’d packed away a feast of paua, local wine and brown rice. The next night we ate nine paua, and by the time dinner was done we had all decided we could go weeks without any more slippery piles of sautéed sea snail.

The perilous ridge and summit of Mount Cook. Photo courtey of Flickr user Carlos Lopez Molina.

Today, we drove for hours south and west on the coastal Highway 1, a bleak route through suburbs, sprawl, malls and endless offerings of gas and fast food. We saw the ocean just once on our left side, though we were reminded that, not far away, New Zealand’s famed natural beauty glimmered and shined. On the western horizon ran a range of jagged mountain peaks that sawed at the ceiling of clouds like shark teeth—the Southern Alps. We had a few glimpses of Mount Cook, the 12,000-foot peak that bears snow all year and has taken the lives of scores of climbers. We drove through Ashburton, Timaru and Waimate, turned upstream along the Waitaki River, and finally stopped in the river town of Kurow, where a trailer park was all we could find. The wind was howling almost too hard to cast flies, and it began to rain. I gave the river a few casts, then turned my back, but Andrew walked and waded for four hours. He returned an hour before dark and said he saw several large brown trout and received a strike from one, which broke his line. He plans to skip coffee and be on the water again before sunrise. Such is the power of the brown trout, New Zealand’s favorite invasive species.

Next week: A New Zealand fishing report that includes fish.

Don't be caught drinking until this Georgian man is done toasting. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Shioshvili.

The Turks were so patient for putting up with me this fall as I cycled around the western half of the country. I cringe now when I recall the many times, while in conversation with strangers, that I lifted my feet and showed them the mucky gobs of fig seeds mashed into the underside of my shoes, accumulated through day after day of standing under fig trees and foraging off the branches. And, when shop keepers asked if I would like anything else with my groceries before paying, I often shook my head and touched my middle finger to my thumb – that gesture which to many Westerners means, “Everything’s just fine.”

Turns out, showing a person the sole of your shoe and making the “it’s-all-good” sign (which was originally coined as sign language by SCUBA divers) are both grave insults in Turkey. It’s a miracle I wasn’t thrown to the bears. It was only weeks later that I learned what a klutz I’d been. I was gleaning a website on faux pas commonly made by travelers, and idle amusement quickly turned to mortification as I recognized descriptions of my own misdeeds. There is nothing to do now but laugh at how many blunders I’ve unknowingly committed through years of visiting strange lands. Anyway, as global travel increasingly links cultures around the world, people everywhere may be growing more accepting of know-nothing travelers like me—and perhaps today the idea of the clueless foreigner is more charmingly comic than it is gravely offensive.

Nonetheless, there are a few things best not to do when traveling—and this list is a start:

1) In Japan, accepting a business card from a Japanese person without using two hands or acting like you are sublimely honored. Because a Japanese person isn’t fooling when he or she hands you a business card. In addition to receiving it with two hands, one is supposed to bow deferentially. Forbes.com addressed precisely this matter, with no intention of parody, in a 2005 article on etiquette pointers for the traveling businessperson. It makes that scene from American Psycho seem not so ludicrous after all.

In Japanese culture, deference and humility must be shown when exchanging business cards, as seen here. In this image, former mayor of Hiroshima Tadatoshi Akiba has also apparently paid respects to the Hawaiian culture by receiving a lei; to refuse one is like slapping a Hawaiian in the face. Photo courtesy of East-West Center.

2) In Georgia, drinking at the table while another is making a toast. Toasts in this former Soviet nation come many times per meal and may last as long as five or 10 minutes. They are sometimes almost hilariously theatrical until one realizes that Georgians are totally serious when they raise their wine glasses and begin speaking. If a guest is present, especially, the melodrama gets thick as the speaker praises the two represented nations, the honor of playing host to a foreigner, the guest’s good fortune as he or she continues their journey, ancestors, God and so on and so forth—though not always in a single toast. I spent some time in Georgia in 2010. Even at such informal sites as the side of the road, men drinking wine sometimes called me over, filled me a glass and embarked on lengthy verbal voyages. It’s a wonder, looking back, that we ever managed to squeeze in a drink.

3) In most of the Middle and Far East, walking into a home with one’s shoes on. Been there, done that—and with gunky fig jam caked to the soles of my cycling shoes, to boot. Yes, I was a walking disaster in Turkey, day after day committing insults so dreadful it’s fortunate I didn’t make the old ladies faint—or the young men call for their weapons.

4) In the Hindu and Muslim world, greeting a person or eating with your left hand. I cannot begin to imagine how many times I have absentmindedly done this in Turkey. Locals, it turns out, traditionally wipe themselves with the left hand. A tad bit presumptuous, isn’t it, for them to assume that I do, too?

5) Also in the Muslim world, eating during daylight hours during the holy month of Ramadan. Being the old hand at social blunders that I am, I’ve committed this crime many times. I was in Turkey during Ramadan in August 2010, and when I caught myself and sheepishly apologized, the folks around me said I had done nothing wrong. I have never known if they were simply being polite. Because in Dubai, anyway, foreigners seen eating during the Ramadan fasting hours can face jail time.

6) In Hawaii, refusing a lei. Don’t feel like wearing a rosary of tropical blossoms round your neck? Tough luck. Put the lei over your head, offer a generous hug in return and consider yourself formally welcomed to the islands. If you really can’t stand the thing, Hawaiian culture considers it acceptable for one to re-gift the lei to one’s spouse—but not, heaven forbid, if she’s a pregnant woman! Tread carefully. Stay vigilant.

7) In Russia, refusing vodka when offered, and sipping it once your glass is filled. Instead, you must gregariously chug your shot glass of Eurasia’s favorite booze. What’s more, having three drinks is sometimes obligatory at an event for one to demonstrate a baseline level of friendliness and social prowess. Meanwhile, women in Russia might do wisely, as custom sometimes demands, to leave the vodka to the men and drink wine instead.

8) And this one may come as a surprise: In Germany, discussing sports. So I read in this Vagabondish post from Amy Baker, who says German people may think someone “uneducated” if he or she is heard discussing a sporting match.

9) In the United Kingdom, holding up your index and middle finger with the back of your hand facing outward. Britons: Please don’t laugh. Because in America, most people are unaware that this is the equivalent of giving someone the middle finger—and please understand that it’s a mistake if someone makes this sign while ordering two beers across a noisy pub.

10) Finally, in the United States, relieving oneself in public. That’s right, all you gentlemen from France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic: Turning your back on a person or a crowd and emptying your bladder may be business as usual where you come from, but in my culture, many people consider it dirty and disrespectful. Why, I have friends and relatives who would keel over dead if they saw such an act in public.

Me? I’ll forgive you.

Anyone want to offer travel faux pas number 11? Or do you have any embarrassing or comical miscommunications worth sharing? Tell us about them below.

Felicity Aston, shown here in Iceland, is currently attempting cross Antarctica alone. Image courtesy of Kaspersky Lab.

Two nights ago, with her tent staked down and dinnertime approaching, Felicity Aston received an unnerving surprise: Of her three cigarette lighters, not one would produce a flame.

Fortunately, the adventurer—now attempting to ski alone across Antarctica and still 180 miles from the South Pole—brought along plenty of matches, and she needs them. Without a working cook stove, Aston’s peanuts, chocolate and even her freeze-dried meals would provide sustenance, but she would have no water, which must be melted from ice. And so she’s rationing her matches—which she has counted down to the last.

“I have just enough to get me to the South Pole,” Aston told me during a phone chat on Wednesday, while her soup simmered on the pot and the wind wailed outside her tent. It was evening, almost bedtime—though time of day hardly matters in December at the very underside of the planet, where the sun circles the sky just above the horizon and leaves anyone without navigation tools as dizzy and directionless as the whirling wind.

Aston began her journey on November 25 at a latitude of 85 degrees south on the Ross Ice Shelf, and she aims to finish by late January. Completion would make her the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unassisted by anything but bodily power. A Norwegian adventurer named Børge Ousland crossed the continent in the summer of 1996 to 97, but he took advantage of the wind when it blew in his favor by letting out a parachute to drag him forward. Aston is using nothing but muscle power—and muscle she needs. At the outset, the 5-foot-11 Aston had with her about 200 pounds of gear, which she is dragging behind her on two sleds. Her baggage is a no-nonsense assembly of tent, stove, fuel and a carefully rationed two pounds of food per day of travel. The journeyer is also packing along a telephone for maintaining contact with more humanly latitudes. She reserves time slots almost daily to speak with people, often members of the media.

Aston is a veteran of travels in rough places, usually accompanied by others. As her website states, “Felicity has raced in the Canadian Arctic, led a team of women across the inland ice of Greenland, led a record-making International team to the South Pole, searched for meteorite craters in Quebec, skied along a frozen river in Siberia, traversed the winter ice of Lake Baikal, completed the infamous Marathon Des Sables across the Moroccan Sahara and spent three years living and working in the Antarctic.” Many of her journeys, she explained to me, have been self-administered tests of her own emotional and physical endurance limits. On this particular trek, Aston may have met her match: solitude.

“I’m learning that I’m not a natural soloist,” the 33-year-old Briton said, her voice responding to mine on the slight delay of satellite communication. “Being this alone is a new experience for me.”

Aston hasn’t seen a soul since she started, since souls don’t naturally occur in this land, but at the South Pole she expects to be received by the scientists occupying the location’s United States-run research station, home of the South Pole Telescope. Aston is covering about 15 nautical miles per day, she says, and expects to be at the South Pole a few days before Christmas. Then, her journey will continue as she walks on toward a remote outpost called the Union Glacier, served by a commercial aviation operator Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions. And while Aston may be in no-man’s land, where schedules, deadlines and responsibility seem to carry little relevance, she is, in fact, tightly bound by one crucial logistic.

“I can’t miss the last plane out,” she said, explaining that ALE’s Ilyushin IL76 aircraft, scheduled to come and go 17 times this year, makes its final departure from Union Glacier this summer on January 26. Aston is already behind schedule, after days of bad weather holed her up in her tent on the Ross Ice Shelf, then slowed her to a feeble crawl on the Leverett Glacier, the wind blasting her from all directions. She has more glacial ice to navigate and more perilous crevasses to dodge or hop before she hits the high polar plateau. From here, a straight shot south will land her at 90 degrees south—not to mention a frigid 9,301 feet above sea level. Aston is keeping on track with GPS and compass, minding the fact that the ever-drifting magnetic South Pole is currently centered over the Antarctic Ocean; she needs no reminding that she is pursuing the geographic South Pole.

The cozy inside of Aston's tent, with dinner cooking in the foreground. Image courtesy of Kaspersky Lab.

At the outset, Aston was eating about 4,000 calories daily. She is bumping up her measured intake to 4,500 calories to compensate for wear and tear on the body, which, instead of growing stronger under such grueling conditions, may actually grow weaker and increasingly exhausted, she explained. I asked what Aston thinks she’ll have for her first square meal back in civilization.

“I’m really missing warm, fresh, puffy bread,” she said.

No matter. Aston, one of the toughest people alive, will have her bread when it comes. Meanwhile, every move she makes is a step on thin ice.

“I feel very vulnerable out here,” said Aston, her voice beamed from Antarctica through space and down again into my own cell phone. “I’ve never been so far away from everything. When you’re this remote, there’s nobody watching out for you, and you have to take absolute responsibility for yourself. It’s a very scary feeling.”

Aston’s attempt to cross Antarctica alone can be followed at the expedition’s website.