Take the high road: the man who visited every country in the world – without boarding a plane
Take the high road: the man who visited every country in the world – without boarding a plane
At 34, Torbjørn Pedersen embarked on a seemingly impossible journey that would take 10 years – and involve cerebral malaria and being held up at gunpoint. He reflects on the highs, the lows and the joy of getting married en route
Fascinating story of a Danish traveler who visited every country on Earth, only by land and boat.
It’s good to see Torbjørn returning home. I remember his AMA on Reddit back in like 2013 and followed him since. I still would pop in his website and check where he was at.
He used to pop in on Reddit around that time, but he had some issue with them at some point. And they didn’t let him do more AMAs anymore. Not sure what happened.
He got totally fucked by COVID, because he was in Hong Kong when it hit and was there for two years. He could’ve flown home and given up, but by that time he was 7 years into it. I remember him also having a lot of trouble crossing land borders in Central Africa because of corrupt border guards and arbitrary visa issues.
Last I checked he was in Maldives! Good to read that he made it back safe. He always seem like a nice, wholesome guy. I always wondered how’d he adapt to being back home.
Must be nice to have the money to not work and pay for things like this.
The article says he was funded by personal savings as well as donations from people. His budget was $20/day, not like he was living the high life in 5 star hotels. I actually remember reading some of his blog posts and how rough he had it certain parts of his trip, especially when Covid hit.
That's a lot of savings or a lot of beggins for like 10 years. And when you're back after all that time you still have to survive: either you knew before you were landing safely or what? You send around CV with a ten years gap? I'm pretty sure I'd be royally fucked also staying on 20$ a day. And that's if that amount was real in the first place.
For real! I've always had something like this in mind if I ever won the lotto or something. I'd love to be able to actually see the world without having to worry about how I'm getting by.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
He would be acting as a goodwill ambassador for the Danish Red Cross, raising awareness of its work in 199 countries and encouraging people to give blood.
“I was born to do this.” Pedersen had lived in three countries by the age of seven – Denmark, Canada and the US – and spent holidays in a fourth, Finland (his father is Danish, his mother Finnish).
He started to work all over the world: in Bangladesh, Greenland, the Arctic Circle, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, as well as Florida and a number of European countries.
Pedersen had to explain to him that this wasn’t an extended gap year; he would not be “sitting on a beach with long hair, playing a guitar and smoking something I shouldn’t”.
As he ticked off countries, moving into Central and South America and to the Caribbean, his “no flying home” rule began to bite.
But overland travel has become more difficult, he says, thanks to increased border security, stricter rules on container ships and disappearing ferries.
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I'm glad to see he's involved with a documentary. Hopefully it's all about this journey. I'd imagine he has a very unique perspective on people all around the world and all of the different cultures if the world, and id love to hear more about it (the article at the end gives some views but I'm sure he has many more things to say).
It took him around ten years to achieve that, roughly 500 weeks. 400 weeks if you discount his forced stay in Hong Kong during covid. There are about 220 countries, depending on how you count. That means, he spent about two weeks in every country. If you discount all the time he's been sitting in trains or ships, there's even less time actually being in a country.
So his "unique perspective" is mostly how to get visas and bribe boarder guards.
I hear what you're saying - that he might have had at best superficial interactions with people. But, stull, I don't know anyone who's had interactions with someone from every country in the world. I'd imagine that gives him the unique perspective (not saying that he would be an expert in any of the cultures he encountered). Also, I'd like to hear more of the details of how it was to travel to such-and-such place - the logistical issues, as you mentioned.
He can finally spruce up the J Peterman catalog.