Man who visited every country without flying has finally returned home
In October 2013, Danish man Torbjørn “Thor” Pedersen set out on a mission to visit every country in the world without flying. After he visited the Maldives which happened to be the 203rd and final country on his marathon journey he returned home in May this year. His epic journey, with the goal of visiting every country in the world only by land and sea, took him over ten years to complete.
After celebrating in the Maldives, the 44-year-old backtracked to Malaysia via Sri Lanka to board the massive MV Milan Maersk - a container ship stretching roughly 1,310 feet long, or about the size of 3.6 soccer fields - for the 33-day voyage home.
Pedersen planned to spend at least 24 hours in each country and to live off a budget of around US$20 a day and anticipated taking four years to reach 203 countries (although the UN recognizes 195 sovereign states, he included partially recognized states, too), but the world decided otherwise.
For instance, he did not foresee that it require 4 months and many attempts to obtain a visa to visit Equatorial Guinea – one of the most difficult countries to enter. He thought he could apply for a Chinese visa at its border with Mongolia, but due to a long processing time had to backtrack nearly 7,500 miles through many countries to get to Pakistan before his visa expired. The most significant delay was been stuck in Hong Kong in 2020 for two years due to the COVID-19 lockdown, and, that too with only nine countries left to visit.
On January 5, 2022, Pedersen was finally able to leave Hong Kong and continue across the Pacific. His first stop was Palau. Behind the scenes, it took six months of negotiation with the Palau government to let him arrive via container ship. “I had to plead with almost every government. For Tonga, we were in touch with the health ministry, navy, and military. No one wanted to say yes and go against the prime minister [because the country was in a state of emergency due to COVID], finally, one night, I got an email from the Prime Minister that simply said, ‘its okay, let him in” says Pedersen.
Pedersen set off for the last country in the Pacific, Tuvalu, wary of the logistics. Home to nine islands and just 11,600 people, Tuvalu is one of the world’s smallest and most remote nations, so it can be tough to get spare parts for boats.“It is gorgeous. The surf is amazing, the sky is beautiful, and the people were so kind and helpful,” he says. “But I didn’t expect to be there for two months. The ships kept breaking down. One of them had a leaking hole in the hull. I tried to get on another ship, but it just never set off.” Finally, Pedersen managed to return to Fiji on a tugboat.
Other challenges he had to overcome, apart from spending nearly a month in quarantine in two countries, included recovering from a severe bout of cerebral malaria in Ghana, surviving an intense four-day storm while crossing the Atlantic from Iceland to Canada, navigating shuttered land borders in conflict zones, and to rescheduling many sailings due to broken-down ships or exhausting bureaucracy.
From start to finish, Pedersen tallied up some incredible statistics during his travels: 3,576 days, 37 container ships, 158 trains, 351 buses, 219 taxis, 33 boats and 43 rickshaws. He crossed 223,000 miles, or the equivalent of nine journeys around the Earth – and that’s not including the long voyage home. But it’s not about the numbers, says Pedersen.
“I set out on this journey with a motto, ‘A stranger is a friend you’ve never met before,’ and I have been shown time and time again that this is true,” he says. “If you engage with people, they’re usually all in.”Pedersen says he’s met warm, friendly, helpful people all around the world, many of whom offered him tea, meals, introductions, translation support, or simply provided directions.“I stayed in the homes of many, many strangers during my travels, and I made it through every country in the world – the ones with armed conflict, the ones with virus outbreaks – unharmed,” he exclaims. “Either I’m the luckiest man on the planet, or the world is in a much better place than most people are led to believe by the scary, dramatic news on social media and news channels.”
“Someone wrote me today that I won first, second and third prize in stubbornness,” laughs Pedersen. “There’s always been a solution. I just had to look really hard for it sometimes”.
Source: External
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