If Alexander wanted indeed to be remembered after his death, his wish definitely has been fulfilled but never in his wildest dreams, I am certain, would he have expected his memory to cover a span of 2,300 years!
When Peter Sommer walked in Alexander’s footsteps in 1994 the entire length of today’s Turkey, i.e. from the crossing of the Hellespont (Dardanelles) all the way to the site of the Issus Battlefield near the Syrian border, I thought we had seen the last of his kind.
After him came, nearly as a matter of course, Michael Wood, who in 1997 went the whole way, from Alexander’s birthplace in Pella, Greece, to the most eastern limit of his empire in India. But Michael Wood travelled with the entire BBC organization at his side and he did not literally walk in Alexander’s footsteps. He didn’t go on foot as Peter Sommer did in Turkey, walking some 2,000 miles - an awing and most rewarding experience, I’m sure.
To my greatest surprise, I now discover that there is another brave young man who got inspired by Alexander the Great and is presently walking in his footsteps. His name is Theodore May, journalist and reporter for the Middle-East in the past four years or so, a native New-Yorker with a degree in history.
He picked up Alexander’s route mid-April of this year, where Peter left of, on the banks of the Pinarus River, the place of the first confrontation between Alexander and the Persian King Darius in 333 BC took place. Theodore's final destination is Babylon and he hopes to reach it in eight months, after a journey of 2,000 miles also. This is quite an undertaking for the Middle-Eastern countries he is crossing are not the most evident ones. Luckily for us at home, he keeps us posted on his blog as he has the luxury of traveling with today’s technology of GPS and computer – something Peter Sommer only 16 years ago had to do without. I can’t help wondering what Alexander the Great would have thought about our instant means of communication …
I truly believe we should support Theodore as much as we can. Do visit his site Backpacking to Babylon as often as you can and send him some encouragement and marks of appreciation. We would do no less for Alexander, would we?
