Footwear for the Long Trek: Choosing Shoes for an Expedition Journey

If there is one piece of equipment to get right before a grand journey, it is what goes on your feet. A blister on day three of a ninety-day trip is not a footnote — it shadows weeks. The good news is that footwear is also one of the most solvable problems: a small, well-chosen set of shoes, broken in at home, will carry you comfortably across trail, town and tarmac alike.

You do not need many pairs. For most of our journeys, two pairs of shoes plus a pair of sandals cover everything from a Himalayan trail to a Kyoto temple garden. The skill is not in owning specialised footwear for every surface — it is in choosing versatile pairs and, above all, in arriving with feet that already know them.

Boots, trail shoes, or both

The old assumption that serious walking demands a heavy, high-cut leather boot has softened. Many travellers now do most of their trekking in mid-weight hiking boots or even trail-running shoes, which are lighter, cooler and need almost no breaking in. Lighter footwear means less fatigue over a long day, and tired feet are careless feet.

A high-cut, more supportive boot still earns its place where the ground is rough, wet or steep, or where you carry weight — a stony Andean descent, a muddy track in The Great Rift after rain. The honest answer for a multi-terrain journey is often both: one sturdier boot for demanding trail days and one lighter shoe for everything else. Match the footwear to the day, not to a single idea of what hiking requires.

The non-negotiable: fit and break-in

No brand or price compensates for poor fit. Shoes should be tried on late in the day, when feet are at their largest, and with the socks you will actually trek in. You want a snug heel that does not lift, room to spread your toes, and a thumb’s width of space ahead of the longest toe so that downhill walking does not jam your toes against the front.

Then break them in — genuinely, not nominally. New footwear needs weeks of ordinary wear and a few longer walks before departure so that the shoe and your foot reach an understanding at home rather than on a remote trail. Arriving with brand-new boots is the single most common, and most preventable, footwear mistake we see.

Socks: the other half of the system

A good shoe with a poor sock is still a poor system. Trek in wool or wool-blend socks, never pure cotton, which holds sweat and abrades damp skin into blisters. Carry several pairs so a clean, dry one is always available, and consider a thin liner sock under a thicker one: the two layers rub against each other rather than against your skin, which markedly reduces friction.

Treat socks as consumable gear. Three or four good pairs, washed and rotated, will see you through a long journey, and a fresh pair pulled on at lunchtime can resurrect a tired foot. If a hot spot appears, stop at once and cover it — a strip of tape on warm skin prevents the blister that an hour’s delay guarantees.

Camp shoes, town shoes and sandals

Beyond your walking shoes, one lighter pair earns its space. A comfortable, low-profile shoe or a pair of sturdy sandals lets your feet breathe and recover at the end of a trekking day, doubles as town footwear for a dinner in Cusco or Samarkand, and serves on a beach or a boat deck. Sandals also handle river crossings and wet landings without soaking your only dry shoes.

What you rarely need is a third specialised pair. Resist packing dedicated dress shoes for our journeys; a clean, dark, well-kept pair of the lighter shoes reads as smart enough nearly everywhere we go. Two pairs plus sandals is a complete footwear kit, and it leaves the bag light.

Footwear across changing ground

A journey like The Long Way East crosses ground that changes weekly: humid forest paths, dry mountain trail, paved old-town streets, the deck of a boat. The wardrobe that meets it is two pairs and a sandal, used in rotation — the boot on the steep and stony days, the lighter shoe in towns and on gentle trail, the sandal at camp and on the water.

For genuinely cold legs, footwear is usually provided rather than packed. On the Antarctic landings of Andes to Antarctica, expedition vessels typically lend insulated waterproof boots sized for each guest, so you need not carry polar footwear of your own. Always read your journey’s kit list — knowing what is supplied is as useful as knowing what to bring.