12,000 MILES WALK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 97, 27 April 1938, Page 9

12,000 MILES WALK.

ZURICH TO TOKYO. AMAZING PEDESTRIAN. NO tt LIFTS» ALLOWED. (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, March 28. The world's most amazing pedestrian has left London on a 12,000-mile walk to Tokvp. He hopes to arrive there ir. time for the opening of the Olympic Games in September, 1940. Fritz Steininger, a fair-haired youth, is an amateur walker and was appointed by the Olympic Sports Association to walk from Switzerland to Tokyo. The 2500-odd miles that he will cover by boat will have to be made up with detours on foot. That is why he was in London. The "stroll" from his Zurich home to London and thence through France to Rome is the detour. No "lifts" are allowed on the journey, and the rules insist that he carries a large unfurled Swiss flag over his shoulder and a minimum weight on his back of 441b. His "passport," an outsize in sketchbooks, is stamped at every Legation, and a score of letters {riven to-him at Zurich have to be posted on to the next capital. The letters are large enough to take all the stamps they will eventually carry, but they are already Bhowing signs of wear.

He was dressed in his national costume —black alpine coat trimmed with red and white cord, and above the pocket •'Schweiz—Tokyo." A reporter asked him the way to Tokyo. J "It is quite easy," he said. "You keep straight on through France to Italy, back through Greece, to Egypt. Palestine, Syria and Irak, across th:.deserts (with native carrier) to Persia, and then on through British India. China and across the sea to Japan." Between the capitals he eats only i fruit and drinks lemonade or water.