Tamar Valkenier
DIE VOLLZEITABENTEURERIN - A WOMAN TRAVELS AROUND THE WORLD
LIVE REPORT BY AND WITH TAMAR VALKENIER
At the age of 28, the native Dutchwoman Tamar exchanged her promising career for a life on the road - on a bicycle she built from recycled materials. As a homeless and unemployed person, she set off on a journey that was supposed to last about a year, but continues to this day, ten years later. Although she lives far below the poverty line, she has never felt so rich.
After two years on the bike, she also travels many miles on skates, on camels, with a pulka and skis, with a donkey, and of course on foot to the remotest corners of our planet. She recounts her three-month crossing of the New Zealand Alps, where she carried only a rifle and a fishing rod to sustain herself.
However, her first trip to the heart of the Altai Mountains touches her the most. Far beyond the last town, phone reception, and flush toilets, she travels to the eagle hunters of Mongolia. She must learn how to ride a horse, how to pack a camel, and how to navigate the remote wilderness of these rugged mountains. With her own horse, camel, and dog, she embarks on an epic four-month journey.
She crosses wild rivers, the Pass of Death, and faces snow as early as August. She learns the hardships of a nomadic lifestyle and earns the respect of a culture that is more hospitable, tolerant, and playful than any she has ever encountered. As she loses her animals in a storm, her horse gets injured, and her dog once kills a sheep, she learns the value of animal companions and recounts how her camel saves her life.
Tamar regularly returns to the Altai Mountains and has befriended a family of eagle hunters. After years of training, she finally caught her first fox with an eagle and won first prize at a local eagle festival in August 2022. She establishes a non-governmental organization (NGO) to support needy nomads and writes a book titled "Die Vollzeit Abenteurerin" (The Full-Time Adventurer). As a cherry on top, the local nomads organize an elaborate Kazakh wedding for her and her husband...
Born in the Netherlands, Tamar Valkenier (1986) retired at the age of 28. In 2015, she gave up her promising career as a criminal psychologist with the Dutch National Police. Although it was her dream job, she felt an overwhelming urge to take time off to see what else life had to offer. Once she started, she plunged from one adventure to the next. Fascinated by traditional ways of life, she visited reindeer herders in the Siberian taiga, the Maasai in Kenya, and trained survival skills with the indigenous peoples in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. She spent winter seasons skiing and ice-skating in Swedish Lapland, trekked across Iceland on foot, lived off the land in New Zealand, and regularly returns to the eagle hunters in Mongolia. Tamar is a wild city girl. As persistent and capable as she may be, she is still a "Daddy's Girl," and no matter how rugged the adventures are, she will always stop to smell a wildflower.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
