His father moved the family to Mexico when he was six, disillusioned with life in the United States after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

His career in journalism began in 1985, when his motorcycle broke in Roswell, New Mexico, and he took a police-reporting job at the local newspaper to earn repair money.

[1] Salopek reported for the Chicago Tribune from 1996 until 2009, writing about Africa, the Balkans, Central Asia, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[1][5][11] Columbia University President George Rupp presented Salopek with the prize, "for his reporting on the political strife and disease epidemics ravaging Africa, witnessed firsthand as he traveled, sometimes by canoe, through rebel-controlled regions of the Congo".

The transcontinental foot journey is meant to cover 24,000 miles, beginning in Ethiopia, across the Middle East, and through Asia, via Alaska, and down the western edge of the Americas, to the southern tip of Chile.

[15][16][17] [18] [19] [20] Salopek has walked with hundreds of local people along the route thus far,[21] including writer and photographer Arati Kumar-Rao in India.