Kayakasia is with Maligiaq Padilla.

23 hours ago

I first met Maligiaq in Taiwan, when I joined a rolling symposium organised by Chungshih of Gearlab.

On a wild island in the Penghu archipelago, he fashioned a spear from a bamboo stick and his pocket knife, and started chasing after a herd of goats. We watched him afar, a shirtless man holding a makeshift spear running down the goats, until one of the goats simply gave up due to exhaustion. We had goat soup that night !

Later as colleagues guiding together in Greenland, he would opened up a whole new world for me. A glimpse into a place of ice and rocks, an Inuit culture connected by a shared heritage stretching from Siberia to Greenland.

Maligiaq grew up in Sisimuit and was taught kayaking and kayak making by his grandfather. He was a kayak champion from a young age. As an adult, He won 10 Greenland national championships. He was highly sought after as a master kayak builder and his kayaks were so beautiful they were displayed in museums.

Maligiaq was the bridge between kayaking past and present. Talking to him about kayaking was like being transported back thousands of years ago when the Inuit still made kayaks out of sealskin and bones. That a kayak was an extension of the human body. That rolling was an essential survival skills - he really could do any rolls in any kayak!

Coming from the tropics, Maligiaq introduced me to arctic paddling and what it was like to live there. He shared with me the beautiful places to paddle. What it was like to deal with ice bergs. Foraging and hunting for food. There was so much to learn from him.

As a co-guide, he was always the emotionally intelligent one, conversing and making friends with a variety of guests and solving countless problems.

We had our misadventures together !

Once, we forgot (he was liable 90%!) the keys to our remote cabins after reaching there with our guests. He had to drive the boat 160km (both ways) to get them!

Another time, he stuffed extra bullets into my PFD as we set out on a hunt. It was so cold that day and he picked up a quantity of Labrador leaves from the tundra to make tea later. He also stuffed that into my PFD pocket. When we had the water boiled to made tea, he stuffed his hand into my PFD and emptied everything inside the boiling water, including the bullets ! We wildly kicked the whole pot away!

When I shared with him crazy ideas, Maligiaq was always the one who encouraged me with“let’s do it!”, making me feel entirely normal.

In Greenlandic, the name Maligiaq means “that of following the waves”. Before we parted a few weeks ago, we devised another crazy idea to go paddling in China next Spring. We even thought of a Chinese name to print on his name card !

马凌海
马 (Mǎ) - common surname in China
凌 (Líng) - ice..or a point that is pressing forward
海 (Hǎi) - sea

Maligiaq was a world-renowned Greenlandic kayaker and master boatbuilder. He had built over 600+ kayaks and some of them are on displays at museums. He was the bridge between ancestral Arctic knowledge and us. He was the greatest figure in the modern revival of traditional Arctic qajaq culture. He dedicated his life to preserving Indigenous watercraft knowledge and transmitting them through classes and workshops throughout Inuit communities in the Arctic.

Anyone with an interest in kayaking or indigenous culture should find out more about Maligiaq.

Maligiaq Padilla (1982 - 2026) ... See MoreSee Less

Kayakasia

6 days ago

Well … sometimes it’s good to have someone with a bit of a belly ! Makes refilling much easier. Water remains the heaviest stuff to carry on the kayak during expeditions !

#Tonga #kayaking #southpacific ... See MoreSee Less