SOME OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST TRAVELLERS
CELEBRITY TRAVELLERS (adapted from Nomad Mania)
1. Alexander the Great (356 BC – 323 BC) – NM1301 40, UN 13 – was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20. He spent most of his ruling years on an unprecedented military campaign through western Asia and northeast Africa, and by the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered one of history’s most successful military commanders.
During his youth, Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until age 16. After Philip’s assassination in 336 BC, he succeeded his father to the throne and inherited a strong kingdom and an experienced army. Alexander was awarded the generalship of Greece and used this authority to launch his father’s pan-Hellenic project to lead the Greeks in the conquest of Persia. In 334 BC, he invaded the Achaemenid Empire (Persian Empire) and began a series of campaigns that lasted 10 years. Following the conquest of Anatolia, Alexander broke the power of Persia in a series of decisive battles, most notably the battles of Issus and Gaugamela. He subsequently overthrew Persian King Darius III and conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety. At that point, his empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Beas River.
Alexander endeavoured to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea” and invaded India in 326 BC, winning an important victory over the Pauravas at the Battle of the Hydaspes. He eventually turned back at the demand of his homesick troops, dying in Babylon in 323 BC, the city that he planned to establish as his capital, without executing a series of planned campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in the establishment of several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexander’s surviving generals and heirs.
Alexander’s legacy includes the cultural diffusion and syncretism which his conquests engendered, such as Greco-Buddhism. He founded some twenty cities that bore his name, most notably Alexandria in Egypt. Alexander’s settlement of Greek colonists and the resulting spread of Greek culture in the east resulted in a new Hellenistic civilization, aspects of which were still evident in the traditions of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-15th century AD and the presence of Greek speakers in central and far eastern Anatolia until the Greek genocide of the 1920s. Alexander became legendary as a classical hero in the mould of Achilles, and he features prominently in the history and mythic traditions of both Greek and non-Greek cultures. He was undefeated in battle and became the measure against which military leaders compared themselves. Military academies throughout the world still teach his tactics. He is often ranked among the most influential people in history.
2. Genghis Khan (1155-62 – August, 1227) – NM1301 – 115, UN 13 – was the founder and first Great Khan and Emperor of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. After founding the Empire and being proclaimed Genghis Khan, he launched the Mongol invasions that conquered most of Eurasia. Campaigns initiated in his lifetime include those against the Qara Khitai, Khwarezmia, and the Western Xia and Jin dynasties, and raids into Medieval Georgia, the Kievan Rus’, and Volga Bulgaria. These campaigns were often accompanied by large-scale massacres of the civilian populations, especially in the Khwarazmian- and Western Xia–controlled lands. Because of this brutality, which left millions dead, he is considered by many to have been a brutal ruler. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China. Due to his exceptional military successes, Genghis Khan is often considered to be the greatest conqueror of all time.
Before Genghis Khan died he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor. Later his grandsons split his empire into khanates. Genghis Khan died in 1227 after defeating the Western Xia. By his request, his body was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia. His descendants extended the Mongol Empire across most of Eurasia by conquering or creating vassal states in all of modern-day China, Korea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and substantial portions of Eastern Europe and Southwest Asia. Many of these invasions repeated the earlier large-scale slaughters of local populations. As a result, Genghis Khan and his empire have a fearsome reputation in local histories.
Beyond his military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire’s writing system. He also practised meritocracy and encouraged religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, unifying the nomadic tribes of Northeast Asia. Present-day Mongolians regard him as the founding father of Mongolia. He is also credited with bringing the Silk Road under one cohesive political environment. This brought relatively easy communication and trade between Northeast Asia, Muslim Southwest Asia, and Christian Europe, expanding the cultural horizons of all three areas.
3. Marco Polo (1254-1324) – NM 1301 70, UN 16 – was an Italian merchant, explorer, and writer who travelled through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295. His travels are recorded in The Travels of Marco Polo (also known as Book of the Marvels of the World and Il Milione, c. 1300), a book that described to Europeans the then mysterious culture and inner workings of the Eastern world, including the wealth and great size of the Mongol Empire and China in the Yuan Dynasty, giving their first comprehensive look into China, Persia, India, Japan and other Asian cities and countries.
Born in Venice, Marco learned the mercantile trade from his father and his uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia and met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, exploring many places along the Silk Road until they reached Cathay (China). They were received by the royal court of Kublai Khan, who was impressed by Marco’s intelligence and humility. Marco was appointed to serve as Khan’s foreign emissary, and he was sent on many diplomatic missions throughout the empire and Southeast Asia, such as in present-day Burma, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. As part of this appointment, Marco also traveled extensively inside China, living in the emperor’s lands for 17 years and seeing many things that had previously been unknown to Europeans.
Around 1291, the Polos also offered to accompany the Mongol princess Kököchin to Persia; they arrived around 1293. After leaving the princess, they travelled overland to Constantinople and then to Venice, returning home after 24 years. At this time, Venice was at war with Genoa; Marco was imprisoned and dictated his stories to Rustichello da Pisa, a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married, and had three children. He died in 1324 and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo in Venice.
Though he was not the first European to reach China (see Europeans in Medieval China), Marco Polo was the first to explore some parts of Asia and to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This account of the Orient provided the Europeans with a clear picture of the East’s geography and ethnic customs, and were the first Western record of porcelain, coal, gunpowder, paper money, and some Asian plants and exotic animals. His travel book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers. There is substantial literature based on Polo’s writings; he also influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map.
4. Ibn Battuta (1304 – 1368 or 1369) – NM1301 – 113, UN 37 – was a Muslim Berber Moroccan scholar and explorer who travelled the medieval world widely. Over thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the Islamic world and many non-Muslim lands, including Central Asia, Southeast Asia, India, China and West Africa. Near the end of his life, he dictated an account of his journeys, titled A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling. He travelled more than any other explorer in distance, totalling around 117,000 km, surpassing Zheng He with about 50,000 km and Marco Polo with 12,000 km.
In 1325, at twenty-one, Ibn Battuta went on a hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, a journey that would ordinarily take sixteen months. He would not see Morocco again for twenty-four years.
Some scholars have also questioned whether he visited China. He wedded several women, divorced at least some of them, and in Damascus, Malabar, Delhi, Bukhara, and the Maldives had children by them or by concubines.
“Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta
5. Hong Bao (1412–1433) – NM1301 41, UN 12 – was a Chinese eunuch sent on overseas diplomatic missions during the reigns of the Yongle Emperor and Xuande Emperor in the Ming dynasty. He is best known as the commander of one of the detached squadrons of Zheng He’s fleet during the Seventh Voyage of this fleet to the Indian Ocean (1431–1433). Hong Bao commanded a squadron that most likely separated from the main fleet in Semudera in northern Sumatra and visited Bengal. From Bengal, Hong Bao’s squadron would then go to Calicut in southern India, to which the main fleet came directly from Semudera across the Bay of Bengal. While the main fleet left Calicut to Ormus (in the Persian Gulf), Hong Bao’s squadron went from Calicut to various destinations on the west side of the Arabian Sea in southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, including Aden and Mogadishu.
Before leaving Calicut, Hong Bao sent seven of his sailors, including Ma Huan, to Mecca and Medina aboard a native (Indian?) ship going to Jeddah.
6. Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) – NM1301 37, UN18
7. Ferdinand Magellan (1480 – 1521) – NM1301 44, UN 13 – was a Portuguese explorer who organized the Spanish expedition to the East Indies from 1519 to 1522, resulting in the first circumnavigation of the Earth, which was completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano.
After King Manuel I of Portugal refused to support his plan to reach India by a new route, by sailing around the southern end of the South American continent, he was eventually selected by King Charles I of Spain to search for a westward route to the Maluku Islands (the “Spice Islands”). Commanding a fleet of five vessels, he headed south through the Atlantic Ocean to Patagonia. Despite a series of storms and mutinies, they made it through the Strait of Magellan into a body of water he named the “peaceful sea” (the modern Pacific Ocean). The expedition reached the Philippine Islands, where Magellan was killed during the Battle of Mactan. The expedition later reached the Spice Islands in 1521 and one of the surviving ships eventually returned home via the Indian Ocean, completing the first circuit of the globe.
Magellan had reached the Malay Archipelago in Southeast Asia on previous voyages travelling east (from 1505 to 1511–1512). By visiting this area again but now travelling west, Magellan achieved a nearly complete personal circumnavigation of the globe for the first time in history.
8. Francis Drake (1540 – 1596) – NM1301 46, UN 20 – was an English sea captain, privateer, naval officer, explorer, and slave trader of the Elizabethan era. Drake is most famously known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580, and was the first to complete the voyage as captain while leading the expedition throughout the entire circumnavigation. With his incursion into the Pacific Ocean, he claimed what is now California for the English and inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish on the western coast of the Americas, an area that had previously been largely unexplored by Western shipping.
Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581 which he received on the Golden Hind in Deptford. In the same year, he was appointed mayor of Plymouth. As a Vice Admiral, he was second-in-command of the English fleet in the victorious battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery in January 1596, after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Drake’s exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as El Draque. King Philip II allegedly offered a reward of 20,000 ducats for his capture or death, about £6 million (US$8 million) in modern currency.
9. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – NM1301 43, UN 14 – was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist., best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by his burial in Westminster Abbey.
Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. It was not until the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.
Darwin’s early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Studies at the University of Cambridge (Christ’s College) encouraged his passion for natural science. His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell’s conception of gradual geological change, and the publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.
Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin began detailed investigations, and in 1838 conceived his theory of natural selection.
It is well-accepted that Darwin had Asperger’s syndrome.
10. Isabella Bird (1831-1904) NM1301 80, UN 16 was a nineteenth-century British explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892.
In 1854 her life of traveling began with a trip to the United States. In 1872, she travelled to Australia and Hawaii (climbed Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa), and moved to Colorado (rode 800 miles in the Rocky Mountains in 1873).
1878, then travelled again to Asia: Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaya. She studied medicine and resolved to travel as a missionary. Despite being nearly 60 years of age, she set off for India in 1889, Bird visited missions in India, visited Ladakh on the borders of Tibet, and then travelled in Persia, Kurdistan, and Turkey. In India, the Maharajah of Kashmir gave her a piece of land on which to build a hospital with sixty beds and a dispensary for women; there she worked with Fanny Jane Butler to found the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in memory of her recently deceased husband who had left funds for this purpose in his will. The following year, she joined a group of British soldiers travelling between Baghdad and Tehran. In 1891, she travelled through Baluchistan to Persia and Armenia, exploring the source of the Karun River.
Her final great journey occurred in 1897, when she travelled up the Yangtze and Han Rivers in China and Korea, respectively. Later, she went to Morocco, where she travelled among the Berbers and had to use a ladder to mount her black stallion, a gift from the Sultan.
11. Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926) – NM1301 41, UN 13 was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist who explored, mapped and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her knowledge and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. Along with T. E. Lawrence, Bell helped support the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan and Iraq.
She played a major role in establishing and helping administer the modern state of Iraq, using her unique perspective from her travels and relations with tribal leaders throughout the Middle East. She was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials and exerted immense power. She has been described as “one of the few representatives of His Majesty’s Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection”.
12. Alma Karlin (1889-1950) – NM1301 107, UN 31 was a Slovene traveller. writer, poet, collector, polyglot, and theosophist. Raised in German-speaking Graz, Austria, she travelled to London, where she learned English, French, Latin, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, and Spanish and later, also studied Persian, Chinese, and Japanese. In WWI, she was in Sweden and Norway. In 1919, she took off on a nine-year-long journey around the world. She visited South and North America, the Pacific Islands, Australia, and various Asian countries. The last leg of her journey around the world was India. After 1928, she never travelled again.
Mahatma Gandhi NM1301 61, UN 3
Amelia Earhart NM1301 43, UN 9
Winston Churchill NM1301 68, UN 28
Ernest Hemingway NM1301 42, UN 19
Che Guevara NM1301 – 149, UN 65
John Kennedy NM1301 57, UN 10
Lyndon Johnson NM1301 94, UN 20
Seve Ballesteros NM1301 60, UN 16
NON-CELEBRITY TRAVELLERS
1. Pierre-Olivier Malherbe (1569–1616) was a French explorer from Vitré. Pierre-Olivier Malherbe went on a 27-year world tour, the first Frenchman to walk around the world alone as a Spaniard between 1592 and 1609, and returned to France in 1609. He has a claim to being the first French circumnavigation. He visited China, and in India had an encounter with Akbar.
Upon his return, Pierre-Olivier Malherbe met several times with the French king Henry IV, to tell him about the gold and silver of the East Indies. He explained the routes to reach these places and offered to lead an expedition for the king. He may have been the author of a Malay language dictionary, that was added to François Martin de Vitré’s work La Description du premier voyage fait aux Indes Orientales par les Français en l’an 1603 in 1609. He is mentioned in the 1629 Traité de navigation et des voyages de découvertes et conquêtes, principalement des François by geographer Pierre Bergeron. In Paris, he also met with the Dutch linguist Erpenius, who was preparing the first Latin–Arab Dictionary.
2. Jeanne Baret (1740 – 1807) was a member of Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s expedition on the ships La Boudeuse and Étoile in 1766–1769. Baret is recognized as the first woman to have completed a voyage of circumnavigation of the globe, via maritime transport. Jeanne Baret joined the expedition disguised as a man, calling herself Jean Baret. She enlisted as valet and assistant to the expedition’s naturalist, Philibert Commerçon.
Commerson’s wife died shortly after giving birth in 1762, and Baret developed a more personal relationship, as Baret became pregnant in 1764. In 1765, Commerson was invited to join Bougainville’s expedition. His appointment allowed him a servant, but women were completely prohibited on French navy ships at this time. Because of the vast quantity of equipment, Commerson was bringing on the voyage, the ship’s captain gave up his large cabin on the ship to Commerson and his “assistant”. This gave Baret significantly more privacy than she would have had otherwise on board the crowded ship. In particular, the captain’s cabin gave Baret access to private toilet facilities.
In Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro, they collected plant specimens including that of a flowering vine, which he named Bougainvillea. In Patagonia, Baret accompanied Commerson on the most troublesome excursions over rugged terrain and gained a reputation for courage and strength.
Her sex was not finally confirmed until the expedition reached Tahiti in 1768. On Mauritius, then an important French trading station, Commerson, and Baret remained behind and Commerson died in Mauritius in 1773. Baret ran a tavern in Port Louis and in 1774, married an officer in the French Army. They arrived in France, thus completing her voyage of circumnavigation in 1775. In 1785, Baret was granted a pension of 200 livres a year by the Ministry of Marine confirming the high regard with which she was held. She died in Saint-Aulaye in 1807, at the age of 67.
While over seventy species are named in honour of Commerson, only one, Solanum baretiae, honours Baret. In 2018, the International Astronomical Union named a mountain range on Pluto for her. On 27 July 2020, Google celebrated her 280th birthday with a Google Doodle.
3. René Caillé (1799 – 1838) was a French explorer and the first European to return alive from Timbuktu. Caillié had been preceded at Timbuktu by a British officer, Major Gordon Laing, who was murdered in September 1826 on leaving the city.
Caillié returned to Saint-Louis, Senegal in 1824 with a strong desire to become an explorer and visit Timbuktu. To avoid some of the difficulties experienced by the earlier expeditions, he planned to travel alone disguised as a Muslim. He stayed for 8 months with the nomadic people of southern Mauritania where he learned Arabic and the customs of Islam. Encouraged by the prize of 9,000 francs offered by the Société de Géographie in Paris for the first person to return with a description of Timbuktu.
Starting in modern Guinea in April 1827 he set off across West Africa. He arrived in Timbuktu a year later and stayed there for two weeks before heading across the Sahara Desert to Tangier in Morocco. He suffered from poor health and died of tuberculosis aged 38.
4. Alexandra David-Neel (1868 – 1969) was a Belgian–French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist, opera singer, and writer. She is most known for her 1924 visit to Lhasa, Tibet when it was forbidden to foreigners. David-Néel wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels, including Magic and Mystery in Tibet, published in 1929. Her teachings influenced the beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the popularisers of Eastern philosophy Alan Watts and Ram Dass, and the esotericist Benjamin Creme. The daring Parisian woman who reached the forbidden Lhassa in 1924 as a beggar!
Disguised as a beggar and a monk, respectively, and carrying a backpack as discreetly as possible, Alexandra David-Néel and Yongden then left for the Forbidden City. She hid under her rags a compass, a pistol, and a purse with money for a possible ransom. Finally, they reached Lhasa in 1924, merged with a crowd of pilgrims coming to celebrate the Monlam Prayer Festival. They stayed in Lhasa for two months visiting the holy city and the large surrounding monasteries. Despite her face smeared with soot, her yak wool mats, and her traditional fur hat, she was finally unmasked (due to too much cleanliness – she went to wash herself every morning at the river) and denounced to Tsarong Shape, the Governor of Lhasa.
5. Gunther Hollberg. This German man travelled to over 200 countries in his Mercedes G named “Otto”. How he got to all these places with the car is somewhat of a mystery but he had some German diplomatic connections that got him into places like N Korea with the car. He also told almost no one about his travels so was much “under the radar”. His travels are detailed in German at www.ottos-reise.de and in English at www.ottosreise,de/en/start.html.
6. Heinz Stücke. This famous bicyclist from Westphalia, Germany is currently 1st ranked on TBT. Heinz has been to all 193 countries, but to an amazing 1105 TBT regions with his bike, travelling over more than 51 years, about 660,000 km. He must be the greatest traveller of us all: what others did with the help of turbo engines, Heinz did with his muscles. In China, he was beaten up by drunks, and several times he was robbed along the highways. To finance his trip, he sold colour brochures about his incredible journey in countries like Japan where it was selling like hotcakes. His excellent cooperation with TBT also shows that age (Heinz is 77) is not a valid excuse to ‘escape’ the verification process. TBT might have lost a few members due to verification, but that’s peanuts compared to the increase of members in recent months, part of them high-profile travellers like Andre Brugiroux (80, author, best travelled French man) who I met in Paris last month, people who have never joined a travel blog before.
7. Audrey Walsworth. The first woman to complete all 193 countries in 2005 and then the TCC list in 2009. Born in 1934 in Chicago, she went to journalism school at the University of Missouri, Columbia, met her husband and moved to Marceline, Missouri, his hometown, and the location of the family business. From an interview on NM
She was born on June 12, 1934, in Chicago and lived there until she left for college and journalism school at the University of Missouri, Columbia. Here, she met her husband and moved to Marceline, Missouri, his hometown and the location of the family business. She had 3 children and took her first trip at age 35 and her second 10 years later (China). Her last country was Timor Leste. She often travelled alone and found that being a single female traveller sometimes brought special treatment.
After she completed the UN list in Timor in 2005, she took 4 more trips – two of them with grandchildren, 4 to Belize and 3 to Italy and San Marino and also to Iraq, Afghanistan, Nakhchivan, and Bangladesh, then a trip to Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland, Ethiopia with a group and then by herself to Yemen.
There was no plan to quit after completing the UN list as she was also working on the Travelers Century Club (TCC) list and there were still many more to go on that. In 2006 – 11 trips, in 2007 – 9 trips, 2008 – 8 trips, 2009 – 9 trips and the last one that year was Wake Island where she completed the TCC list for the first time. But even then she did not quit, just started repeating places that she had enjoyed and wanted to see more, so went on 37 more trips until this year when Covid 19 stopped travel.
“There is no way to compare the travel in the 1980s and 1990s to today. Security is the biggest change along with the number of people traveling. There were times before when planes would be half-empty. There were not the crowds that you see now at Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, etc. and many countries were not as commercialized as they are today. How I wish for the Vietnam that was in 1992, a lovely country coming out of the war, serene at last, friendly with wonderful people and food. For years I said it was my favourite country, that it had everything, but no more. Have been back 3 more times and each time more commercialized than the last. The same thing with China, and all the other so-called emerging nations. Still wonderful places, but not the same to someone that saw them early on.”
Three years ago, a young woman traveller (Cassie De Pecol) claimed to be the first woman to do all the countries in the world, disregarding Audrey as well as other notable women who achieved the feat after her. She was very defensive and snarky and has been shown to have transited some countries.
8. Graham Hughes. This 33-year-old British man was the first person to visit all 201 countries (193 UN members plus Taiwan, Vatican City, Palestine, Kosovo, Western Sahara, and the four home nations of The United Kingdom) without using a plane. He used buses, taxis, trains, and longer-haul voyages mostly by hitching lifts on cargo ships and his own two feet to travel 160,000 miles in exactly 1,426 days – all on a shoestring of just $100 a week. The epic journey began in his hometown of Liverpool on New Year’s Day 2009 and ended in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, which did not even exist when he set off.
North Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan were the easy ones – far tougher were getting to tiny island nations like Nauru, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Maldives, and the Seychelles where there were sometimes pirate threats.
Highlights include: He spent four days ‘crossing the open ocean in a leaky boat’ to reach Cape Verde, was jailed for a week in the Congo for being a ‘spy’, was arrested trying to ‘sneak into’ Russia, and had to be ‘rescued from Muslim fundamentalists by a Filipino ladyboy called Jenn’, dancing with the Highlanders of Papua New Guinea, befriending orangutans in Borneo, riding through the badlands of Kenya on an 18-wheel truck, meeting the Prime Minister of Tuvalu – and warning schoolchildren in Afghanistan about the dangers of men with beards.
“I love to travel, and I guess my reason for doing it was I wanted to see if this could be done, by one person travelling on a shoestring. I think I also wanted to show that the world is not some big, scary place, but in fact, is full of people who want to help you even if you are a stranger.” He raised money for the charity WaterAid.
This however was a “broken up” journey in the sense that he flew home a few times and then restarted his journey, in contradistinction to Torbjørn Pedersen (see below) whose journey was unbroken.
9. Frank W. Grosse-Oetringhaus (1943- ) “the best-Travelled Man on Earth”. From Hamburg, He first started travelling at age 15 on a trip to England. He studied industrial engineering, got a Ph.D. in economics, became an associate professor, and joined Siemens, a global company, which gave him many assignments around the world as a consultant.
He is in a registered partnership – since 2006 – with Teodoro Murallon who is originally from the Philippines but then immigrated to Germany. Friends for 32 years, they have travelled together ever since. He is one of the most adaptable people in the world. They were “homeless” for 11 years since 2006, they sold their home in Munich, still have a rented-out house in Thailand, and moved back to an apartment in Berlin.
Favourite Places. 1. The Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Very difficult to get to – the M/V Ortelius is the only ship to go there and then you need helicopters. For 3 million years there was no precipitation, almost nobody has been there. See the Ross Sea, glaciers and dryness, mummies of the seals, some 2000 years old, perfectly maintained.
2. Lake Uyuni in Bolivia at 3660m. Sleep in a salt hotel, and drive on the largest salt flat of the world. Pure white, the oldest and highest cacti in the world, 900 cm high and 900 years old. Surrealism and unique. Mega highlight – a highlight with two or more outstanding worldwide superlatives. A unique place, worldwide one of a kind.
In 2002, after his professional career ended, he started a new phase in his life dedicated to travelling and as an aside, involvement with UNESCO. He founded the “World Heritage Development Project”, helping small countries get on the “Tentative List”. We started with the WH list but that turned out to be complicated, you have to follow 160 guidelines… Germany wrote 5000 pages to get Regensburg on the List! So now we work almost only for the Tentative List because that is simple: 5 chapters, a couple of pages. Our special competence stems from my professional background as a strategist, about how to give a place a competitive advantage… about 200 candidates want to go to the list every year but only about 20 make it. So you are in a competitive position. If you want to get on the List you have to outperform a competitor. Usually, the applications are written by specialists, they see the details, but often they don’t see a competitive position so clearly. And this is where we come in – our methodology is to find out the competitor! We have visited more WHS than anybody else in the world. We have seen more highlights so we have outstanding knowledge. We can compare these sites with others…
In the 1980s, he started making lists – important volcanos, beaches, mountains, restaurants, cities, cities to live in, cities to view, etc. and he started to systematize the whole world by creating a list based on what tourists are interested in – relevant, objective highlights, the real stuff, the highlights – it must be a geographically identifiable spot, it must be legally accessible and must be tangible and then apply criteria a. It must be a superlative b. It must be unique and, if not obvious, must be considered by well-renowned groups of people, books, etc… and c. it must be objective – my personal opinion is of no relevance for the selection – it must fulfill clear criteria which characterize the highlight.
The criteria must be relevant to the character of the site. For example: a waterfall can be described in height (the supreme is Angel Falls in Venezuela), width (the supreme is Victoria Falls which is 1.8 km wide) and volume (where the supreme is Niagara Falls), and the number of waterfalls on the site (Iguassu has 285, which makes it supreme in this category).
The selection must be systematic, which means we subdivide the world into 1000-2000 categories – waterfalls, rocks, shopping malls, etc. – and then we make a ranking within these categories. Beauty is an important criterion but is in the eyes of the beholder, the judgment of the individual and they use all beholders. There are about 1500 categories and in each about 3 top positions, so that makes 4500. They then want to prove that it is feasible to see 4500 to 5000 highlights in 10 years. It is tough, but it is doable. Teo and I will do it. We are writing a book about the concept and the selection of highlights. Very different from WHS who have 10 criteria – all of them general and therefore meaningless.
We describe every item by its uniqueness, so you will always have a rationale for why is it on the list. Compare this with Patricia Schultz who wrote the book 1000 Places to See Before You Die. She is not systematic, she does not give you a rationale for her choices.
The title ‘The System of World Highlights’ and as a subtitle, the action title, ‘see the whole world in 10 years’. We will describe every highlight be about 5-10 lines
The nicest point on earth? Requires categorization to make it transparent, but the answer is subjective. For him the best of the best is Angkor Wat, the biggest temple complex on earth.
With a list of 5000, they give a selection of these – 1000 MEGAhighlights (MEGA must be superlative on a global scale), 2000 TOPhighlights, 2000 NORMALhighlights.
4 people for dinner? – Alexander the Great, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Prince Harry. Alexander the Great, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs are among the greatest visionaries of all time. I would like to talk with them about visions. But why Prince Harry?
10. André Brugiroux, who European newspapers have called ” the Marco Polo of the modern times ” is the author of a best-selling book in French, ” The Earth Is But One Country “, which describes his epic journeys of discovery and adventure that took him through 135 countries and 400,000 km over 18 years. The book is now printed in English by Oneworld (UK) under the title: ” One People, One Planet. “.
At the age of 17, he left Paris with 10 francs in his pocket to realize a childhood dream of touring the world: not as a tourist, but rather as a student of mankind. After some years in Europe where he learned five languages, and in Canada to arrange financing for his travel, he set out to re-discover the world.
As a hitchhiker on every conceivable type of transportation, living for the most part on a dollar-a-day for six years, he covered America, the Pacific Islands, the Far East, Trans-Siberia, the Middle East, India, Iran, and all of Africa. He also made a film that he narrates in English of this odyssey: Alaska at minus 45°, the Australian desert at plus 50°, the head-hunters of Borneo, the bonzes in Bangkok, an ashram in India, a Kibbutz in Israel, and jail in Bolivia ( where he was mistaken for one of Che Guevarra’s guerillas) among many others.
In Alaska, he encountered the Baha’i Faith, a world community dedicated to achieving the unity of the human race, and embraced its tenets. In 2004, he finally visited his last territory: the kingdom of Mustang (in the Himalayas). It took him altogether 50 years to realize his childhood dream: to see all the countries and territories of the world.
He slowly reached the conclusion, as a result of his experiences with so many of the world’s people, that, as the title of my book puts it, ” the earth is but one country “.
11. Harry Mitsidis. Born in 1972 in Greece and now living in London, Harry is the founder (and #1 traveller) of The Best Traveled in 2012. He had completed his 193 at age 36 in 2008 and second in 2024. He had found great interest from other travellers in having a website that could keep track of all their travels – that persuaded him to start The Best Traveled. In 2018, the Series was added, the site was renamed Nomad Mania and there are now about 57,000 sights in about 60 categories. And in 2020, the regions were increased from 1281 to 1301.
Nomad Mania developed a verification system that has become the standard. It is spectacularly organized and every statistical category is available. The website was recently completely reorganized and is very functional.
As of Jan 2022, Harry led the world in regions with 1243/1301. He perpetually leads the Posted Trips category. He has also organized NM trips to several countries: Oceana, Somalia, Mali, Niger.
12. Dervla Murphy (1932-2022)
The moment was unforgettable. Dervla Murphy was ten, struggling up a steep hill near Lismore in County Waterford on her second-hand bike when she looked down at her thin legs slowly pumping and thought that if they just went on doing so, she could get to India. On the same birthday when she got the bike she had also been given a second-hand atlas, so the route was in her head already. Nothing stood in her way at all except two little tiny stretches of water and a mountain range or three.
So began a dream of traveling that eventually led to a trek of 4,500 miles from Ireland to Delhi, a journey of 1,300 miles through the Peruvian Andes and trips to southern Africa, Madagascar, Cuba, and the Middle East. She kept copious diaries, often written by oil-lamp or moonlight as she prepared to slide her sore bones into yet another flea-bag or a charpoy in the open air, and the diaries grew into 26 books which earned her the title, daft she thought, of an Irish national treasure.
Her preferred conveyance for most of these trips was an Armstrong Cadet man’s bike, bought in 1961 and christened Roz, short for Don Quixote’s steed Rocinante. Roz was fitted out with two pannier-bag-holders that could carry 28lb of kit, including the vital notebooks, a good deal of aspirin, William Blake’s poems, a stock of American cigarettes, and an emergency supply of Courvoisier. Her whole temperament was steady, reconciled to being pushed through deep sand, heaved up cliff faces, and near-drowned in raging rivers, as her owner was. If Roz could not manage it had to be Dervla’s poor feet, or a pony, or a mule (in Ethiopia), or the buses that bounced violently and sickeningly over one atrocious track after another. Once in the Himalayas, she even boarded a small Dakota but hated herself for making use of this noisy mechanized impertinence. It was an insult to the mountains.
Generally, too, she traveled alone. Why shouldn’t a woman go where she pleased, embracing an unplanned life? She did not start the long treks until she was 31, having to stay at home before then to care for her disabled mother and aging father. By that time she certainly knew her own mind, batty and stubborn and fiercely independent. (Even her daughter Rachel, whom she sometimes took roaming with her later, had been conceived with no intention of ever marrying.) When Responsible Persons gave her Good Advice, such as telling her it was folly to cross Afghanistan on a bike, she was all the more perversely determined to go. Mind you, she carried a .25 pistol in the pocket of her slacks and used it too, dispatching a wolf that flung itself at her and seeing off a lecherous six-foot Kurd, to her great satisfaction and surprise.
Many who met her in the world’s wilder and less visited places assumed, in fact, that she was a man. She was tall, deep-voiced, and well-muscled, and in extremis, as when fording a river in Pakistan, could carry Roz round her neck. She could also drink like a man, beer being her staple, and preferred to do her research (though that was too solemn a name for it), in bars, pubs, and teahouses or at village gatherings, where locals crowded curiously around her. Those were the people she wanted to mix with, ordinary folk, sharing their joy at bloodily fought polo matches or letting toddlers ride around on her back while she brayed like a donkey. To them, she would patiently show, time after time, how a bicycle worked, and with them she would sit down fairly gratefully to meals of stewed clover, fly-blown bread, and rancid ghee, amazed by how freely they shared the little they had.
The more remote the place, the more she was drawn there. To look out on thousands of miles of uninhabited land, from the top of a mountain she could possibly freewheel down, was sheer bliss. Her greatest happiness often lay in harshnesses, such as the vast ice of Siberia, the dazzlingly tinted ranges of the Hindu Kush—like light immobilized—or the crenelated peak in the Andes through which the sun woke her one morning as it rose. Yet human incursions also delighted her, in gardens full of roses and pomegranates, orchards misted with apricot and apple blossom, and fields where women worked decked out in crimson and silver. Her special love was for Afghanistan, not then convulsed by war and not yet touched by the creeping blight of Modernity, Uniformity, and so-called Progress. She felt she might have stayed forever in the Hindu Kush, living in the sanity of backwardness.
Dislike of Western ways permeated “Full Tilt”, her first and most famous book, which told of her dream trip to India. But the exploits to which she subjected both Roz and her own unfortunate carcass disguised the true strength of her political feelings. Gradually she showed them more. For subsequent books she lived in squalid, disease-ridden camps among refugees from Tibet and Palestine, becoming a campaigner for them, and traveled among victims of aids and genocide in Africa. For “A Place Apart” she took Roz to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, talking to people on both sides in an effort to understand Irish nationalism, for which her father had been imprisoned. Her happiest spell of research was also close to home, for “Tales from Two Cities”, a study of race relations on the outskirts of Birmingham and Bradford. Both trips were mostly pub-work and reinforced the major conclusion she had reached already—that wherever you went in this fractious world, people were essentially the same and had to be treated with simple (socialist) fairness.
In old age, living in a chilly warren of stone buildings in Lismore surrounded by books, cats and forget-me-nots and subsisting mostly on beer, her regrets were few. But they were heartfelt. She wished she had visited Tibet before the Chinese took over, and she wished that remote places might be allowed to stay that way. Mass Tourism, Motor Roads, Expanding Markets, Capitalism itself, were all neat hell to her. Each mobile phone announced the end of a sealed and precious culture.
Travel was done now, and arthritis made it hard to write. But she was happy enough just to watch the leaves moving in the wind, excited, preparing to spin abroad.
13. Torbjørn Pedersen (aka Thor, he called the project ‘Once Upon a Saga’) has finished his quest to visit 203 countries in an unbroken journey without flying. He has spent at least 24 hours in each country, with an average time of 17 days. Although initially planned to take 4 years, this took him almost 10 years, due to unforeseen challenges such as visa issues, political unrest, and the COVID-19 pandemic. During the adventure, he got married and almost saw his goal slip beyond his grasp due to pandemic travel restrictions when he spent three years in Hong Kong. He won’t be flying again until after he gets back home to Denmark.
Interview:
How does it feel to reach your goal after 10 years? I wish I could say it feels amazing, but the reality is that I’ve become rather robotic over the years given the intense workload and stress. Furthermore, I’ve hardly had a moment to myself since reaching the Maldives so there has been no real reflection. I very much still feel like I’m “in it” and it might not change until I join the ship back to Europe or some time after setting foot back home in Denmark. Having said that, I’m proud that I’ve made it and grateful for all the attention I’m currently facing.
What was the biggest challenge you faced during your journey besides covid? I would have to say entering Equatorial Guinea. I visited 5-6 EG embassies/consulates across several countries and was treated with much disrespect by authorities. All without flying and while navigating countless checkpoints. After three months I finally succeeded in getting the visa only to discover that the borders were now closed. A “no one in and no one out” policy from EG. I desperately looked for solutions during my 30-day window to enter EG before the hard-earned visa expired. On day 27, with 3 days left on my visa, I met a French expat who could help me across the border of EG. I stayed two nights in what became country no. 100 after four months of intense effort to enter.
What’s next for you after accomplishing this incredible feat? Initially friends and family. I’ll also need to readjust and “arrive” back home. My wife and I will seek to start a family. In the long run, I hope to write a book and create a life around speaking engagements. I’m also looking forward to the full feature documentary which is due to come out in 2024.
14. Rauli Virtanen. The first person to visit every country in the world. From Finland, he has for the past 50 years, distinguished himself as a renowned journalist specialising in conflict zones. His work uncovers the darker facets of world history, offering invaluable perspectives often missing from mainstream narratives. In his first job with a newspaper, he focused on Latin America, and from 1970-71, took a cargo ship from Finland to Rio de Janeiro and embarked on a 10-month backpacking trip to South America and North America. During that trip, he learned to trust people, and became less shy and more open. Latin America was the first continent he specialized in. The 1973 Chilean military coup when Pinochet took power there, then witnessed the Dirty War in Argentina and went to Cuba. He visited all the Latin American countries very early on, including Caribbean countries. He wrote a book about Latin America in the late 70s.
His first war was in Vietnam where in 1972, he embedded with the US military. In Bucharest, Romania, in 1989, he witnessed the Romanian revolution, in 1979, the Nicaragua revolution, and then met Nelson Mandela, one of his greatest honors (his non-bitterness, gentleness, friendly approach, and sense of humor are what he really admired. “In today’s world, we need more Mandelas. It’s very difficult to find another Mandela in today’s world”). He also spent time with Muhammad Ali and Yasser Arafat. The most important and heartwarming events are just meeting the locals in developing countries – it seems that the poorer they are, the more hospitable they are,
Foreign correspondents don’t stay for too long, and their fixers, people who help us stay there are risking their lives 24/7. His most important lesson is to not become cynical. If you become cynical, then you have to leave.
He’s also written a book about Finns as peacekeepers and their history, basically since 1956 when the Finns were part of the UN forces in the Suez Canal, up until their later service in Afghanistan. He’s written a book about Finnish humanitarian workers, mostly doctors and nurses. His latest book is about Finnish sailors in foreign ports, especially during the Russian era. His most-sold book in Finland is “Reissukirja Travel Book,” where he shares more personal stories, especially about his travels. In September 2023, he’s releasing a photo book. It’s disheartening to see the world not moving in the direction he’d like. The tone of the book is not encouraging but hope it serves as a wake-up call for people to act before it’s too late.
“We’re living in difficult times. It started with the pandemic, followed by Russian aggression in Ukraine, global inflation, and climate change. Extreme poverty is on the rise, more students are dropping out, and the cost of staples like bread and rice is increasing due to various global pressures. We’re also seeing the rise of populist policies worldwide. We’re living in dangerous times, but I like to think that world history has its ups and downs, and we have to believe that we’ll get through this difficult period.”
China has definitely changed the most since the end of the 1980s. He had a chance to travel by car from Hong Kong to Beijing because there was a Hong Kong-Beijing rally, and one of the famous Finnish race drivers, Ari, invited him to join as press. His Swedish colleagues and he decided to take detours off the rally route to visit villages where the Chinese people had never seen foreigners before. At that time in Beijing, foreigners were only allowed to travel maybe 20 kilometers away from the city. The conditions in the countryside and the poverty in China were eye-opening. He’s returned to China many times since then, and the economic growth is amazing, although the political situation is different.
In contrast, North Korea hasn’t changed much except for the development of more dangerous ballistic missiles and weapons. People are still suffering in the countryside, and there’s no personal freedom. In other countries like Kenya, the changes are most noticeable in big cities like Nairobi, but unfortunately, many countries have seen the clock turn back in the countryside. However, the advent of the Internet and mobile phones has made a big difference in material wealth. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor has been growing in every country.
He visited St Helena, where there were Finnish prisoners of war as they had participated in the Boer War at the turn of the 20th century, siding against the British. After the war, several thousand prisoners, including Finns, were transported to St. Helena.
Some destinations beckon a return visit, especially those with people and stories that have deeply impacted me, like Afghanistan, where I’ve been 13 times.
The idea of visiting a newly independent nation intrigues him. Whether it’s Catalonia, Scotland, or New Caledonia – all places he’s been to – he’d like to cover their independence celebrations and not just visit for the novelty. Technically, Bougainville might become independent around 2027.
The four people he would invite to an imaginary dinner would be Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali, Kofi Annan, and Barack Obama.
15. Gunnar Garfors. The first person to visit every country in the world twice. A 44-year-old Norwegian, his Nomad Mania statistics (July 2023) are not impressive – 534 on the NM Master list and only #9 in Norway, NM1301 – 444, M@P – 4, UN territories – 216, TCC – 228, MTP – 443, WHS – none recorded.
16. Slawek Muturi has also been to every country twice. Half-Polish, half-Kenyan, 57 years old, lives in Warsaw, Poland, and works in residential real estate. He speaks 11 foreign languages. Likewise, his NM statistics (July 2023) are not that impressive – 97 on the NM Master list and #3 in Poland, NM1301 – 720, M@P – 1, UN territories – 242, TCC – 267, MTP – 709, WHS none recorded.
YOUNGEST TO 193
Henrik Jeppersen, Born 1988 #1 Denmark. In 2016, at 27 years old, he became the youngest to see all 193 (Eritrea), 30 when finished all FIFA countries. Travels alone, very light and low-cost – staying with local people, getting hotels and flights sponsored, hitchhiking (done more than 1,000 times), avoiding restaurants and instead buying food at supermarkets, using low-cost airlines or buses.
Most difficult to travel – Africa with bad infrastructure, pollution, dusty roads, corruption and safety concerns. Founder of Everywhere in the World, a website about travelers with interviews and stats.
Anderson Diaz. #183 Brazil-born 1993. Finished age 26 in 2019 (Cabo Verde) but is listed in NM as Transited Only for Some Countries.
Cassie De Pecol. #181 US-born 1989. Finished age 27 in 2017 (Yemen) but is listed in NM as Transited Only for Some Countries.
Three years ago, this young woman traveler claimed to be the first woman to do all the countries in the world, disregarding Audrey Walsworth as well as other notable women who achieved the feat before her. She became well known in EPS with her claim to be the first woman in the world to travel to every country and was very good at self-promotion. She was very defensive and snarky and has been shown to have transited some countries (claimed Syria from the Golan Heights, and stepped over the line into North Korea in the negotiation building at the DMZ).
An advocacy group has just sued Cassie “according to a lawsuit recently filed by the consumer protection group Travelers United, De Pecol has amassed this audience by repeatedly making fraudulent claims.”
Travel influencer Cassie De Pocol subject of lawsuit – Airportoairport
Audrey Walsworth – 193 countries … and 324/325 on the TCC List! – GlobalGazNina Sedano – 193 countries … and one of the few women to accomplish this goal – GlobalGaz
FASTEST TO 193 **Transited some countries
**Anderson Diaz. 26 years old from Brazil – 543 days
**Cassandra De Pecol. 28 years old from Connecticut – 558 days (see above).
CANADIANS WITH 193 or close
Nomad Mania Member verified for UN countries, but not regions
1. Eric Abtan. Born 1973, done at age 43 in 2016 (Nauru)
2. Daniel Walker. Born in 1941, done at age 66 in 2007 (Mongolia). He is listed as a citizen of Costa Rica where he has lived since 1991. Has 969 NM regions and would be #1 in Canada if he listed himself as a Canadian.
Nomad Mania Member non-verified
3. Michael Graziano. Born 1989, done at age 30 in 2020 (Angola)
4. Horace Tong. Born 1986, done at age 35 in 2021 (Guinea-Bissau)
Travelers with Personal Website
5. Ian Boudreault. Born 1982, done at age 32 (Libya)
6. Mike Spencer Bown. Born 1966, done at age 47 in 2013 (Ireland). He wrote a pretentious book called “The World’s Greatest Traveler” and when asked how many counties there are in the world says “it’s open to debate”, possibly implying that he hasn’t been to all 193. He joined Nomad Mania in 2020 where he was #129 on the Master List and then promptly removed himself from the site.
Very Close
7. An Xian Ni. Born 1966, UN 189
8. Ian Tremblay. Born?, UN 189?
Go to www.nomadmania.com to see possibly the most active world travelers.
