SELANGOR – X user Manu Ram’s social media posts have gone viral because of a thread he posted about how he walked from his home in Damansara Utama, Selangor, to the A’Famosa fortress in Melaka.

Mr Manu, who also goes by the user names Menara Kajang or @r00dran on the social media platform, posted the thread on Nov 15 to tell others about his 159km-long journey through photos and short videos he shot along the way.

In an interview with LifestyleTech, Mr Manu talked about why he decided to make the journey.

“The short answer is, I was tired of being average, so I wanted to do something exceptional. The long answer is, there were other factors too. I’m in between jobs and have been applying for two to three hundred places, going through so many different interviews,” he said.

“But nothing was clicking – I felt really trapped, demotivated and worthless, almost.

“So I thought of something that I can do on my own that gives me a sense of accomplishment, something (about which) everyone would think ‘this is crazy’, but I genuinely feel like I can do.

“Then the idea just came to me, and I thought ‘hey, let’s just walk to Melaka’. Forty-eight hours later I set out on my walk with a T-shirt, jeans and a laptop bag.”

Mr Manu had not undergone any sort of training beforehand, describing himself as “just a dude who wanted to see what he could achieve and how far he could go”.

His thread on Twitter chronicling his journey now has more than 2.1 million views.

He set off on his walk on Nov 2 at 6.37am and arrived on Nov 9 at 8.44am, taking a total of 170 hours and seven minutes to complete the journey, or a little over a week.

All the while, he documented the journey and updated close family and friends who knew about what he was doing.

“The night before I left, I opened Google Maps and set the mode of transportation to walk. It showed a path and I got a general idea of where I was going,” he said.

“On the last day, I walked 53km, starting at 1pm, and arrived the next morning at 8am.”

He said he slept at bus stops during short breaks to catch his breath, for about half an hour to an hour at a time.

It was not an entirely smooth journey. Just four hours and about 15km into his walk, Mr Manu said his shoes began falling apart. This resulted in a 45-minute detour to replace them and gather other essentials for his journey.

He had sunburn and developed blisters on his feet as he walked. At points during the journey, he travelled in pitch-darkness and lost phone reception along with the ability to navigate via the Global Positioning System.

“When I reached Mantin (in Negeri Sembilan), I realised that there weren’t any hotels there, so there was nowhere for me to stay. My only option was to walk through the night to reach Seremban.”

He said that by the last day and the final 25km, he was walking with a limp.

“People I met along the way offered me lifts, but the whole point was to make the journey myself.”

Several netizens likened him to the titular character in the 1994 film Forrest Gump, who runs across the United States five times solely because he feels like running.

Mr Manu said he plans to do a challenge like this again in the near future, most likely in early 2024.

For now, he said, he wants to focus on his physical fitness and health and take up martial arts.

“I also want to set my mind to finding a job. I know what I’m capable of and how much I can push myself now,” he added.

“Maybe next time I’ll walk to Penang, maybe all the way to Singapore, or perhaps across from the Strait of Malacca to the South China Sea.” THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK