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Travel + Leisure
a day ago
- Travel + Leisure
I'm the First Person to Travel to Every Country in the World Without Ever Getting on a Plane–How I Did It
For Travel + Leisure's column Traveling As, we're talking to travelers about what it's like to explore the world through their unique perspectives. We chatted with Thor Pedersen of Denmark, who spent nearly a decade on a single journey to 203 countries around the world, never once getting on a plane. During the project, he detailed his experience on his blog, Once Upon a Saga , and visited Red Cross offices in 192 nations as a Danish Red Cross Goodwill Ambassador. His book "The Impossible Journey" came out this spring, with a documentary by the same name on its way. Here's his story… My mother was great at instilling in me adventure and imagination as a child. I would picture I was a part of Robin Hood's gang, Ivanhoe, or Indiana Jones. When I got older, I became fascinated with proper adventures of those who had gone inside the deepest, darkest jungles and followed the longest rivers, circumnavigated the planet, found their way to the North and South Poles, and made it to the moon. Eventually, I realized I was born too late. I couldn't be the first to reach the top of Mount Everest, for example, because that was done in 1953. The great firsts were gone. I felt a bit sad, like there was nothing left for the rest of us. Then, in 2013, my dad sent me an email about extreme travelers, people who'd gone to every country in the world. I had no idea this was possible. I thought it would take a lifetime, and you'd have to be a millionaire. Back then, about 200 people had already done this, and some were in their 20s, so that was quite inspiring. But, I realized, no one had traveled to every country without flying. I was 34 and figured I was likely on a path like everyone else my age: Start a family and continue my career. But I just couldn't leave the thought, so I started planning. I bought a map and blue and red pens, and sat down with my sister to plot out the route. I wanted to start in my home of Denmark, and then cover about two-thirds of the European countries, before going over the North Atlantic, North America, Central America, South America, and then up through the Caribbean. Then, I'd come over the Atlantic and go from West Africa to North Africa, finish the rest of Europe, and then go to the Middle East. That would connect to Asia, and then down through and around Australia and the Pacific. Eventually, I had a fully formed project and funding. Thor with camels while in Ethiopia in 2017. At the time I was planning the journey, I was in a new relationship with a wonderful woman I met in 2012, and we started dating in 2013. She wanted to do the Berlin Marathon that year, so we completed that together in September, and I set my departure date on Oct. 10 at 10:10 a.m. since the four 10s had a nice ring to it. I set three cardinal rules. First, I had to be in each country a minimum of 24 hours, but I could stay as long as I wanted. Second, I couldn't return home until I reached the final country. It had to be one journey. And lastly, no flying for any reason whatsoever. So if I was evacuated in an airplane, I'd have to reset to start all over. There were also three side rules. I couldn't pay any bribes the whole way. I also had a budget of an average of $20 a day. So if I had to pay $50 or $100 for a visa, I didn't spend any money other times. The third rule was I couldn't eat McDonald's the whole way. I traveled by public transportation wherever available. The bulk of that was buses—351 in total. I took 158 trains, especially in Europe, where there's lots of connectivity. There were also taxis, shared motorcycles, mini buses, and metros. Where it was possible, I took sailboats. Ferries were also an easy way to travel. Toward the end of my project, I took lots of container ships as I was going through the Pacific. The whole experience was wild. But the funny thing is, it didn't have that kind of gravity in 2013. I thought, if I follow the rules, then there's a clear definition of what it means to visit every country without flying. But not being able to fly meant the countries all had to connect. Not getting a single visa could be an issue. If there was one country blocking me, I couldn't move forward. Thor on a train in Sri Lanka in 2023. There were many highlights. Venezuela is such a gorgeous country—I couldn't believe my eyes. There's something about the mountains, vegetation, and the size of the valleys, plus the coast and islands. I also went to Machu Picchu in the afternoon and had it to myself, since all the tours come in the morning. That was cool—standing in the mountains, seeing the clouds in between peaks, and looking at the ancient town. There was also the time I was on a container ship between Iceland and Canada during a four-day storm. The ship shook greatly for several days. It was winter and we got a report saying there was ice in the water—and we weren't far from where the Titanic sank. It was not a good situation. But at the end, a mirror-like condition hit the surface of the water, and it was just beautiful. Any time the surface broke, it was a whale or a dolphin. At night, we saw the northern lights. Four hours before we could see Canada, we could smell its forest since the wind blew pollen out east. It was incredible. When I was in the Pacific, where the water was a light turquoise blue, there was a moment the ship headed toward a huge rainbow. I was on top of the bridge and asked the officer, 'Is this normal?' He said he hadn't seen it before. But at its heart, my journey was about the people. My motto was, 'A stranger is a friend you've never met before.' Thousands of people had their hands in this project. People who would pat me on the back when I had a bad day, or give me a meal, a place to sleep, or just point me in the right direction. People would help with translations and connections. I was never alone—people around the world were helpful, funny, and generous. I knew it was going to be fun. I was going to meet people and eat great food. All that happened, but a couple of years into the project, it became challenging. I had to be in a country, whether or not I wanted it. In most countries, it wasn't a problem. But if I went to a place with armed conflict or was unable to get a visa, then the 24 hours becomes an issue. Not returning home was a tough rule. For instance, Equatorial Guinea is a beautiful little country with amazing flora and fauna. But it's also in a hard part of the world, with dictatorships and corruption. It's changed a lot since I was there in 2016. Back then, they were strict about who they wanted inside their country. It took me three months to get the visa. I went from one diplomatic mission to the next to the next, often going back to countries I had already been to and having to get visas so I could re-enter those countries just to go and get denied a visa. When I finally got the visa, the borders were shut. It was rumored there had been a coup attempt and that it had failed. I only had 30 days to enter before my visa expired, so I was desperate. I tried so many things. Three days before its expiration, I met a French expat working in Equatorial Guinea, who was able to take me inside the country. The project was estimated to take less than four years, but it ended up taking nine years, nine months, and 16 days. This meant I was in a long-distance relationship for almost a decade. My now-wife came 27 times, which corresponds with 27 different countries. (She used a plane every time.) We had our ups and downs in the first few years. She was studying to become a doctor, got her PhD, and then she started a career. When she and I were both preoccupied, and we had a great distance between each other, it was hard making a long-distance relationship work. It almost fell apart at one point, but we managed to focus on ourselves and build it up again. Then, things got really good, and I started to think, this is the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I found a ring in Tanzania, with a Tanzanite stone, which is unique to the country. Depending on how you twist it, it changes its color in the light. I decided I was going to ask her to marry me on top of Mount Kenya. We started hiking with our guide, and it took two to three days to reach the peak. In my head, it was going to be like The Lion King with a beautiful sunrise and animals bowing. In reality, it got cold as we approached the top. The flowers and rocks were frozen, and there was ice and snow. At the top, there was no view—it was a complete whiteout. But I got on one knee and asked her the question, and she said yes. She almost danced all the way down the mountain. At the bottom, we had some popcorn and tea. There were even monkeys on the rooftop. I was down to the last nine countries when the global pandemic hit. I was supposed to spend four days in Hong Kong to make transit between two ships. In the beginning, the country was tightly closed. I ended up being separated from my fiancé for a year and a half. There was no way I could get her inside Hong Kong unless we were married. Then, I learned there was an agency in Utah where you can get married online. She was in Copenhagen at 10 p.m., I was in Hong Kong past midnight, and we had family and friends logging on from all over. Due to the time difference, we were not technically married on the same day. We got the paperwork, and that was good enough for Hong Kong to allow her to get a visa. She did three weeks in hotel quarantine, and then we were together. But after that, we couldn't get the paperwork past Denmark. So after I left Hong Kong, we met again in Vanuatu, a beautiful island nation in the Pacific. We just happened to meet a German who had been living there for a long time. He had a resort and arranged many weddings. So we decided to get married there. In a short span of time, we got married on the beach, had cake, and took photos. But Denmark said no for a second time, stating it wasn't a real wedding. So we finally got married in city hall in Copenhagen after I got home. It's a funny thing, we've been married three times now. Even though the journey came with smiles and laughs, I wanted out two years into the project. And I pushed for almost eight more years to complete it. The two years of the pandemic, not knowing how long it was going to be, was mentally very stressful. In the moment, I would look back, thinking about all the people I'd met, places I'd been, and things I'd learned. It was also good to look forward, like someday I'll be in Japan. But sometimes it was nightmarish. I didn't realize there would be so much paperwork involved. In some countries, securing a bus or train ticket required a marathon of paperwork. In other places, it took a couple of minutes on the phone. The longest I spent on a ship was about 10 months. Thor, in 2023 while traveling on cargo ship in Fiji. When I was on my way to my final country, the Maldives, someone sent a message saying, 'This is the last time in your life you can visit a new country.' But I love going back to countries. There's always stuff I haven't seen. It's fun to go back and see how things change. Now I'm working on Project 773, which has divided the world into more pieces, and I'm working on trying to visit 773 of them so I can be Denmark's most traveled man. I hope that from learning about my journey, people will be inspired to follow their goals. We have to fight hard for the things we hold dear and fight harder for the things we believe in. Whether you want to finish an education, learn a language, excel in playing an instrument, or a million other things, remember to fight for it. If you're unable to obtain it on your own, then expand your circle. Now, my wife and I have a daughter. We just did a 40-day RV trip across the country, traveling through 18 states and more than 6,500 miles. Hopefully, she will also learn to pursue her goals with some determination—and I hope she will travel. Actually, I hope everyone will travel and cross more borders to meet more people.
South China Morning Post
03-05-2025
- South China Morning Post
How one man's globetrotting tour was waylaid by Covid in Hong Kong
Thor Pedersen's wedding day was a strange affair. Wearing a new suit he'd had tailored in Hong Kong, he was alone in his Kwai Chung flat while his Danish fiancée, Le, was more than 8,000km away in Denmark. Due to the different time zones, they didn't even get married on the same day. Advertisement 'It was lockdown in Denmark because of the pandemic,' explains Pedersen. 'Le was alone in her apartment and couldn't have any friends or family over. We were getting married through an agency in Utah, in the United States, who told us the only time they could do it was lunchtime in Utah, which meant it was 10pm for Le in Denmark and 4am for me in Hong Kong.' It was 2020, and the couple originally planned to get hitched in New Zealand during Pedersen's headline-grabbing quest to become the first person to visit every country in the world consecutively without flying. But when Covid-19 hit, the Danish adventurer was stuck in Hong Kong for nearly two years. The online wedding was the only solution available to allow Le to come and spend a few months with Pedersen in Hong Kong during lockdown. 'The moment it was done, you switch off your computer and you're alone in the darkness,' recalls Pedersen, 'and now you're married.' Newly engaged Thor Pedersen and fiancée Le at Point Lenana, 4985 metres up Mount Kenya where he proposed in November 2016. Photo: courtesy Thor Pedersen This isn't how anyone imagines their wedding day. But very little about Pedersen's adventure, as detailed in his new book The Impossible Journey, went as planned. He anticipated the whole trip would take three or four years. Instead, it took nine years, nine months and 16 days, or 3,576 days, Hong Kong having thrown a particularly large spanner in the works. Pedersen expected his visit here to last four days, but travel restrictions kept him in limbo, almost pushing him to quit his mission to visit all the world's 203 countries altogether. Born in 1978, Torbjørn 'Thor' Pedersen grew up in the Danish town of Bryrup. He was a shy, troubled young man, bullied at school and having to spend a few years moving between different parts of Canada, the US and Denmark due to his father's job with a bedding company. His parents divorced when he was 16. After attending business school, completing his military service and backpacking around Asia, he began a career in shipping and logistics. In the book, he describes a feeling of not belonging in Denmark and yearning for adventure, like his globetrotting heroes throughout history, such as Roald Amundsen , Hernan Cortes and Ibn Battuta . Pedersen's father sent him an article in 2013 about the English adventurer Graham Hughes, who had set a Guinness World Record as the first person to visit every country in the world without flying. Pedersen was consumed by the idea but he wanted to push it even further. Whereas Hughes had broken the trip into stages, flying home in-between legs, Pedersen planned to cover every country in one long non-stop journey – a tougher feat, especially as it meant arranging every visa, passport or ticket while he was on the road. This also made for a more isolating experience, spending years away from home, and Le, with whom he'd fallen in love in Denmark a year before his departure. Thor Pedersen stands in front of Kamsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang, North Korea, in March 2019 where he was required to wear a shirt and a tie while visiting. Photo: courtesy Thor Pedersen
Daily Mail
27-04-2025
- Daily Mail
The Impossible Journey by Thor Pedersen: After 3,576 days of travelling, I know the world's a safe place
The Impossible Journey Thor Pedersen Robinson £25, 308pp As a child growing up in Denmark, Thor Pedersen dreamed of being a great explorer, his mind filled with images of tangled forests, abandoned temples and lost empires. After a spell working as a United Nations peacekeeper, he started a career in shipping and logistics. In 2013, his father sent him an article about an Englishman who had gone to every country in the world, travelling by land and sea, although he had paused his trip several times to fly home. Bored with his job, and eager for adventure, Pedersen, right, decided he would do similar, but with no interruptions and definitely no sneaky flights home. Armed with a modest amount of sponsorship, and having been appointed a goodwill ambassador by the Danish Red Cross, he set off in 2013 with a list of the 201 countries he needed to visit. His plan was to pass through a country every seven days, and he calculated the journey would take no more than four years to complete. Looking back, he writes, 'I was delusional from the very first seconds of the project.' He criss-crossed Europe before travelling on a container ship from Iceland to Canada, and then journeying through North, Central and South America. In each new country, he noticed, he would be told he was lucky to have survived the place he had just come from, and how dangerous his next destination was. His real problems started in Africa. He contracted malaria in Liberia and found it almost impossible to get an entry visa to Equatorial Guinea, 'a tiny, paranoid petrol state'. When he finally got there, he was bitten by chimpanzees. A part of the journey that should have taken six weeks had lasted nine months. On the top of a windswept Mount Kenya, he proposed to his long-suffering doctor girlfriend, Le, who was visiting from Denmark. By now, his enthusiasm for his journey had waned, but he ploughed on through Asia, before gearing up to tackle the far-flung Pacific islands. Arriving in Hong Kong in January 2020, he was puzzled to be handed a face mask. Pedersen spent the pandemic years in Hong Kong; with only nine countries still to go, he refused to give up on his quest. Finally, in May 2023, he made it to Sri Lanka and then the Maldives, the final countries on the list. After 3,576 days and having covered 380,000km, he could go home – by boat, of course. The Impossible Journey is never less than entertaining, but gets bogged down in endless struggles with unyielding bureaucrats for the visas he needs. When he does write about watching hundreds of dolphins frolicking off the coast of the Solomon Islands, or wild days drinking vodka with the locals in Turkmenistan, the book really comes alive. Now married to Le, and with a baby daughter, he is proud to be the first person to visit every country in the world without taking a flight, but admits: 'The project damaged me, and I cannot be sure I'll ever be right in my head again.' What he remembers most about his travels are the people he met, and the kindness they showed him. His conclusion is that 'the world is far safer than people realise'.
Telegraph
11-04-2025
- Telegraph
I visited every country in the world without flying
As adventures go, it was never going to be anything other than colossal: travelling to all 203 countries in the world, without boarding a single flight. But such was the self-imposed task for Thor Pedersen in 2013 when, surrounded by friends settling down and his latest international engineering contract over, the idea just seemed to make sense. His father had sent him an article about people pinballing across the world on a shoestring budget: he could do the same, he reasoned, and cross the finish line in 2018. Reaching the Maldives, his final destination, would not take the predicted five years, however, but 10. His odyssey was punctuated by otherworldly landscapes and unforgettable encounters, but 'frustrations, disappointments, danger and hardship,' too. 'A decade is a long time,' according to Pedersen. 'It has been intense.' When we meet via Zoom, Pedersen, now 46, is inevitably about to set off on another global jaunt, this time to the Antarctic (he didn't visit the continent during his decade-long trip). He recounts his mission in the book The Impossible Journey, released April 26. It traces his appetite for adventure back to his childhood in Kerteminde, a harbour town in central Denmark, an itch later scratched by overseas stints in the likes of Libya, the Arctic and Bangladesh. But the email from his father 'was the first time it dawned on me that it was possible to go to every country in the world,' he remembers. 'I had no idea.' Realising that nobody had ever visited them all without flying – and that his then-girlfriend, somewhat miraculously, would agree to 'the mother of all long-distance relationships' and wait for him to return – there was no going back. Everyone, he assumed, would be on board with his goal. 'In 2013, it seemed like the entire world will understand, the entire world will fall behind me – I'll have all the support I need. I'll be able to get on any ship I need to; doors and homes will be open. I really thought that I would have a tremendous momentum with this,' he laughs. 'The bubble burst eventually. After several months of travelling, I realised that people are busy with their own lives – they don't care about what I'm doing.' The first year, when he visited destinations including Russia, the US and Poland counting on support from several organisations in Denmark including the Red Cross, and a handful of companies, was 'child's play' compared to what came next. An encounter in Cameroon in 2015 almost broke him, he reflects, when he was pulled over in the dead of night by three men in camouflage cradling rifles. Inebriated, they spat: 'You don't belong here. You've made a mistake.' He had been in Africa for months by this point, and was used to his share of checkpoints and rogue guards – but things felt 'frighteningly out of control' that night, he recalls. 'I am certain that they are going to kill me,' writes Pedersen in The Impossible Journey. 'I don't know whether I have minutes or seconds left, but I know, without any equivocation, that I'm going to die.' After being abruptly released, he and his driver made for the car – a decision he was sure would be instantly revoked; that they would start firing at any second. As they made their escape into the night after almost an hour of questioning, he asked the driver to pull over, emptied his bowels behind a rock, and made for the Congo. Then there was the malaria he contracted in Liberia. When he met his girlfriend in Ghana, his next stop, she insisted he seek medical help and he was hospitalised; the disease had left him so debilitated he was unable to write his own name. Parasites had spread to his brain, doctors confirmed – untreated, he would die within days. 'Her holiday had been ruined, but she saved my life,' he says. He recovered after a couple of weeks, though with lingering tremors in his arms. Inevitably, there were more scrapes. Aboard a cargo ship he had smuggled himself onto in Iceland, thunderous rains overhead pushed the swell to six metres, waves thudding into the hull. Anything that wasn't tied down was catapulted across the deck. For four days 'there was never a time when I was not holding onto a wall or railing with at least one hand,' he recalls. There was also his trip through war-torn Yemen, and the grim discovery of five dead bodies strewn across a Libyan beach, refugees who had drowned at sea. These harrowing encounters at least made sleeping at a bus terminal with one eye open in Honduras, or on a Central Park bench, where he awoke to find himself covered in pigeon droppings, inconsequential. While he is still in touch with some of the thousands of people he met along the way, for the vast majority of that decade, Pedersen was 'very, very, very lonely,' he admits. Even now, two years after his return – and married to his then-girlfriend, with whom he has a newborn daughter – the singularity of what he's been through brings a sense of deep isolation. 'It's such a lonely feeling, but I guess I'm going to have that feeling for the rest of my life,' he explains. 'It's not just on the trip – it's that no one or very few people in the world are ever going to do, or fully understand, what you have done.' He doesn't want fame, he adds, 'but I am craving recognition. I really feel that I have a hard time letting go [of the sense] that someone has to recognise that this was done, and the undertaking that it was.' His journey has left him with existential questions (and a twinge of guilt when he does now board planes), but palpable gratitude, too. 'How did I return home without any bullet wounds?' he asks. 'I haven't been stabbed, I haven't died from strange diseases, I haven't been kidnapped.' That was largely thanks to the kindness of those who helped him along the way – an experience he calls the 'reverse lottery'. Unlike the usual kind, where you're odds-on to lose, 'with people,' he smiles, 'you are constantly winning.' Pedersen's five most memorable moments Solomon Islands 'Just being there felt like an adventure, partly because of the myths that swirled around the place. I met a village elder on the ferry who invited me to his island. He asked if I had any films on my laptop for the children, so I put on The Jungle Book. Then he goes, 'do you have any more battery on that thing?' And we watched The Thin Red Line. 90 people crowded around as I leaned the screen against a fence, the backdrop of the palm trees against the night sky. I've never looked at my laptop in the same way again.' Lesotho 'It was extraordinary for me to walk in that landscape and feel safe: no malaria and no traffic, and people passing me on horseback. The weather was nice and the birds were chirping when I came to a waterfall. It was almost like the waterfall was singing to me: like, welcome to this magnificent moment that the world created just for you.' Sudan I met the most hospitable man in Sudan – he took me in and laughed at me every time I tried to pay for something, saying: 'your money has no value in our country'. He then helped me get my visa to Eritrea, travelled through it with me, then invited me back to Sudan for his brother's wedding. Hong Kong 'The number one place I would like to return to is Hong Kong. I ended up spending two years there due to the pandemic, and hadn't realised 75 per cent of it is countryside. I fell in love with the lush, green, almost primeval ferns that were home to every sort of animal. The longer I stay somewhere the more I connect with a place, and the more it means to me.' Washington DC 'I was waiting to board a train in the US when I began talking to the guy in front of me. It turned out we were seated next to each other, and talked all the way to Chicago. At this point he trusted me to look after his bag while he went to a cemetery to visit relatives' graves. We went on talking for days, and he bought us tickets to the VIP cabin, spending the rest of the trip in luxury. To this day we text each other. It was the best train ride of my life.' The Impossible Journey: An Incredible Voyage Through Every Country in the World Without Flying by Thor Pedersen is published on April 24.
