Ancient walking trails are back—and you can hike them

National Geographic

01-04-2025

Mei Zhang grew up amid the emerald-cloaked mountains of Yunnan, China, where an old joke mentions that the gorges were so narrow, and their slopes so steep, that you could shout across the valleys to ask your nearest neighbors to dinner. The punchline—in a region where walking paths were the only links between some rural homes—is that it would still take them all day to arrive.
'The mountains and the trails shaped the way people lived,' recalls Zhang, a National Geographic Explorer and founder of the travel company WildChina. They defined Zhang's childhood, even as the landscape fired her yearning to see the world. 'When you looked out in front of you, it was mountains after mountains. And you didn't know what was beyond,' she says.
Many of the trails that Zhang walked as a child fell into disrepair as modernizing China sprouted cities, railroads, and highways at a breakneck pace. But today, some are newly accessible to travelers, who can explore in the footsteps of those who forged them.
In part, that's thanks to Zhang's work to revitalize one of the oldest and most iconic paths in Yunnan, the 1,000-year-old Tea Horse Road. Once a trade route joining lush Yunnan tea forests with markets in highland Tibet, it was gradually abandoned—and at times lost entirely. Reimagining the path as a hiking route, Zhang hopes the Tea Horse Trail will help sustain the mountain culture she grew up with and bring economic gains to little-visited rural areas.
'They offer this feeling of connection to the land, connection to tradition, connection to heritage,' Zhang says. 'I'm like … there's got to be a way to keep these going.' The question of how to do that is the subject of her dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley, where Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate studying the Tea Horse Trail; this spring, she's returning to Yunnan to walk and conduct research along it.
(Related: Rediscovering China's ancient Tea Horse Road, a branch of the famous Silk Road.)
Where to hike an ancient footpath
Her work goes beyond academia, too. The Tea Horse Trail is a cornerstone of WildChina's GUDAO Project, which aims to restore the Tea Horse Trail and other largely forgotten paths across China. ('Gudao' means ancient trails in Chinese.') In February of this year, WildChina launched a series of new walking tours along those trails, from an overnight trek through the West Mountains outside Beijing to a 6-day Biluo Snow Mountain trip in the footsteps of early Catholic missionaries.
Nuodeng, a former Tea Horse Trail town, has some of the best-preserved examples of traditional Bai architecture in China's Yunnan Province.
Photograph by Leisa Tyler, Getty
People hiking along the old Tea Horse Trail can witness this mountainous view from the small Yunnan town of Nuodeng.
Photograph by Leisa Tyler, LightRocket via Getty Images
If the initiative is a personal passion for Zhang, it also comes at a time when historic walking trails are making a comeback around the globe, backdropped by landscapes as varied as the cultures calling them home. In the dense forests of northern Sweden and Norway, the 149-mile Finnskogleden follows paths taken by 17th-century Finnish immigrants; many of the trail's 13 sections are accessible as day hikes, and you can walk the entire trail in around two weeks.
Amid the rock formations and desert peaks of southern Jordan, the newly opened, 75-mile Wadi Rum Trail knits together old trade routes and Haj pilgrimage paths. In keeping with ancient Bedouin traditions, most hikers explore the trail alongside guides from local tribes.
In the United Kingdom, the Slow Ways project aims to map and promote walking routes between every British town and city, including along prehistoric paths dating to the Neolithic period; visitors can use an online route planner to find nearby trails or plot multi-day adventures. The 250-mile Trans-Bhutan Trail, which opened in 2022, follows 16th-century Buddhist pilgrimage routes, winding from village to village across the mountain kingdom. The nonprofit that founded the trail offers guided hikes, including two annual departures that tackle the entire distance—an epic, 36-day trek.
(Related: Why ancient pilgrimages are back in vogue in the UK.)
From slow travel to slow living
Hiking such trails offers more than a scenic walk in nature, says Daniel Svensson, an associate professor at Sweden's Malmö University who has studied the Finnskogleden and other heritage paths. 'There are these longer perspectives on history that you can find on these trails,' he says. '[They] are connected to a way of life where slow mobility was more common.'
That way of life is within living memory in Yunnan and other places where the trails have reemerged. Construction on Bhutan's first road began only in 1960, notes Sam Blyth, founder of the Bhutan Canada Foundation, which led the initiative to restore the Trans-Bhutan Trail. Before the second half of the 20th century, walking paths were the only way to get from place to place in the country. When hiking the Trans-Bhutan Trail, Blyth says he met elders who recall how, as the old trails and bridges lapsed, villages were severed from their nearest neighbors, divided by a steep slope or rushing river.
'They lost touch with people who had been part of their lives, and communities, for decades,' Blyth says. By rebuilding bridges and paths, the Trans-Bhutan Trail helped restore such ties, while also delivering income sources to far-flung places. 'They're fixing up rooms in their house for travelers, they're opening cafes and small restaurants,' says Blyth, noting that a walking trail can more directly help local people than big resorts and hotels. 'We wanted to see real grassroots benefits.'
(Related: Discovering misty peaks and monasteries on the newly restored Trans-Bhutan Trail.)
Living traditions on the trail
For nomadic Bedouin communities in Jordan and Egypt, meanwhile, guiding visitors on the ancient trails draws on skills passed down between generations, from navigation to desert survival, says Olivia Mason, a lecturer in geography at Newcastle University who has studied the geopolitics of walking trails.
'The trails can be really important, because they work with livelihoods that are mobile in some ways, and actually continue to promote that,' says Mason, contrasting the culturally relevant, meaningful work of guiding walkers with more typical tourism jobs, such as working in a gift shop. While doing research among Bedouin communities near trails in Jordan, Mason has noticed that for some families, guiding work has the potential to keep young people in rural places, offsetting a trend to seek jobs in urban areas. 'When I speak to the children of the trail guides, the children say, 'I want to be a guide, like my father,'' she says.
That living history is vital because trails are heritage unlike any other. If left untended, trails swiftly vanish, whether swallowed by evergreen forests, or buried in desert sands, or wrapped in a spongy carpet of moss. It's only in the walking that trails survive for generations to come, says Daniel Svensson, the Swedish trails researcher. In that light, travelers on ancient trails aren't just seeking out history—they're actively participating in its preservation.
'You can't take a trail and put it in a museum … it's something you need to continue to use,' Svensson says. 'It's a physical manifestation of history.'
(Related: Discover the real Transylvania on a new long-distance hiking trail.)
Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Afar, CNN, and other outlets. Jen Rose Smith is a Vermont-based writer covering adventure, sustainability, and culture—she's reported stories from six continents and in places spanning the Sinai Desert and Bolivian Andes. Her work has appeared in the, the, CNN, and other outlets.