Jūrmala to create memorial for record-setting traveler Kārlis Bardelis

Jūrmala will create a memorial for world traveler and six-time Guinness World Records holder Kārlis Bardelis, who died last year at the age of 40, LSM reported. The project is being advanced by his sister and close friends and is expected to be completed within a few years.

The memorial is planned for Kaugurciems, a seaside neighborhood of Jūrmala. Bardelis crossed continents and oceans using only his own physical strength and set several Guinness World Records.

His sister Līga began developing the idea with his close friends after his death late last year. “He deserves it. This is the least I can do for him. A monument to his life, his achievements and the kind of person he was,” Līga Baranovska said.

The proposal was submitted to Jūrmala’s participatory budgeting competition. Of the 14 projects put to a public vote, the Vecslocenes walking trail received the most support. The memorial received 847 votes and ranked second, but Jūrmala City Council decided to provide almost 68,000 euros in additional funding so it could also be carried out.

Jūrmala municipal council member Ligita Maziņa said Bardelis’s courage and achievements had international significance and that the memorial could inspire other people, especially young people.

At present, the planned memorial in the Kaugurciems dunes by the sea is marked only by a sticker on a road sign bearing the logo of Bardelis’s travel project, “Bored of Borders”. The location was chosen because Kauguri and Sloka were places where the Bardelis family spent its childhood, while the sea later became an important part of Kārlis’s travels.

Sculptor Edvīns Krūmiņš, the father of one of Bardelis’s closest childhood friends, created the monument sketch. The design is planned to combine a globe, an astrolabe motif and a boat.