Life of a Victorian adventuress: Incredible story of clergyman's daughter who braved malaria, floods and wars to trek across China

Giovanni Giarrana: un militante infaticabile. Con tristezza il sindacato Unia ha appreso la scomparsa dell’amico e militante sindacale di lunga data Giovanni Giarrana. Il suo impegno per il nostro sindacato, dove in passato aveva ricoperto la carica di copresidente della commissione dei migranti, è stato per anni infaticabile. Solo nel marzo scorso aveva partecipato per Unia a Tunisi al Forum sociale mondiale, dove aveva organizzato un gruppo di lavoro sul tema dei profughi che arrivano sulle coste della Sicilia, sua isola natale.

If you happen to see two backpack-toting white men doing some serious walking, chances are they are the globe-trotting French guys who have been walking for the past six years in a journey of a lifetime through many countries that has now brought them to Malaysia.

If, on the 13th of November, 1889, some amateur prophet had foretold that I should spend Christmas Day of that year in the Indian Ocean, I hope I should not by any open and insulting incredulity have added new burdens to the trials of a hard-working soothsayer – I hope I should, with the gentleness due a severe case of aberrated predictiveness, have merely called his attention to that passage in the Koran in which it is written, "The Lord loveth a cheerful liar" – and bid him go in peace. Yet I did spend the 25th day of December steaming through the waters that wash the shores of the Indian Empire, and did do other things equally preposterous, of which I would not have believed myself capable if forewarned of them. I can only claim in excuse that these vagaries were unpremeditated, for the prophets neglected their opportunity and I received no augury.

Meet Mark Gibbens, a 50 year old Australian Registered Nurse and Ultra Distance Walker.