Travelling to every country in the world is already one of the globe’s hardest challenges.
But for Thor Pedersen, it wasn’t quite hard enough.
The 45-year-old Danish adventurer became the first and only person to visit every country in the world without taking a single flight in 2023.
His mammoth voyage to 203 countries took him a decade (3,576 days) to complete. He spent at least 24 hours in each country and says that the challenging journey across 380,000km ‘took him to the brink of his sanity’. Thor has now written a book about his adventure, ‘The Impossible Journey’.
In an exclusive chat with MailOnline Travel, the traveller reveals where he faced ‘grave danger’, the most logistically challenging country to travel to and the destinations which hold a special place in his heart.
The idea for Thor’s incredible voyage was sparked by an email from his father in 2013. He says: ‘My father sent me a link to an article about extreme travellers who’d been to every country in the world. And I started digging into it and I found out that no one had accomplished a journey of visiting every country without flying and that struck me like a lightening bolt.’
Once the idea was formed, Thor set out planning his route and admits that he was ‘quite naive’ about the difficulties when he left home. Of all the places he visited, he reveals that Equatorial Guinea, on Africa’s west coast, presented the biggest logistical challenges.
‘I had no idea that Equatorial Guinea was going to be difficult. I overlooked it in my research. It almost broke me,’ says Thor. ‘Equatorial Guinea is just notorious for not giving visas. It just didn’t need tourists, it’s a wealthy oil state and it’s a paranoid dictatorship. The borders were shut and I went from one embassy to the next and got denied over and over again. Often in the most cruel and unnecessary ways with people screaming at me and belittling me. It took me three months before I finally had the visa.’
Thor Pedersen became the first and only person to visit every country in the world without taking a single flight in 2023. He’s pictured here in Sri Lanka
The traveller completed his decade-long journey in the Maldives, where he’s pictured above
His mammoth voyage to 203 countries took him a decade (3,576 days) to complete. He’s pictured in Sri Lanka
That logistical nightmare occurred soon after one of the worst moments from Thor’s trip where he reveals he felt ‘certain he was going to die’. The traveller was accosted at a checkpoint in Cameroon by three drunk men armed with guns close to the border with Congo.
Thor tells MailOnline: ‘That was the only moment where I was 100 per cent certain that I was going to die. I had absolutely no doubt that it was the end of the road for me and there was no way out of it.’
While the traveller escaped the encounter, the moment left an impression and came at a time when he was at his ‘lowest point’ on the adventure. Thor says: ‘I spent part of my journey thinking “maybe I shouldn’t be doing this”.’
Another challenging moment came while Thor was ‘onboard a container ship in the North Atlantic during winter’. He says: ‘The weather acted up to a degree where you couldn’t stand on your legs without holding on to something. You couldn’t lie down on the bed without ending up on the floor. You could barely eat a meal because you would be out of hands. And there was ice in the water and the ship wasn’t ice class. We were also pretty close to where Titanic went down and that storm lasted for four days.’
But despite the difficulties, Thor reveals that during his decade of travels the good moments far outweighed the bad. And while he met fantastic people everywhere, there are two countries he picks out as the friendliest in the world, which many may be surprised by.
Thor reveals: ‘I could single out Uganda. In Uganda, I found an openness and a kindness where I almost expected to get a hug just walking down the street.
‘And in Pakistan, they have a saying that’s something along the lines of “The guest is God”. They don’t mean that you’re a god or anything like that, they just mean that the guest should be respected and treated with the utmost courtesy. If you’re a guest you do nothing at all. They do everything for you and in many cases, you can find it hard to pay as well because you’re a guest.’
Despite having 203 countries and territories under his belt, Thor says that there’s nowhere he wouldn’t want to go back to. However, there are two countries that he’s in ‘no great hurry to return to’.
Thor reveals that guests are treated with the ‘utmost courtesy’ in Pakistan, where he’s pictured above
Thor faced some of his biggest logistical challenges travelling to Equatorial Guinea, where he’s pictured above
Thor experienced incredible ‘openness and kindness’ while travelling in Uganda (where he’s pictured above)
He explains: ‘I ended up spending two months in Tuvalu (in the Pacific Ocean) because I couldn’t leave. I really feel I’ve seen that country. But on the other side of that, I’d like to go back and meet some of the people I met the first time around. And the Vatican is not high on my list. I spent 24 hours in the Vatican and I really don’t have a good reason to go back.’
After reaching the Maldives, the last country of his decade-long journey, Thor is now back in Denmark and lives with his wife and daughter. He jokes that his family are now ‘having to deal with having him around all the time’.
While the traveller learned many lessons over the course of his trip, it’s the kindness he received that’s stayed with him the most.
He reveals: ‘I look at the world map and I realise that I haven’t been to a single country in the world where I didn’t receive some sort of kindness or support from local people.
‘In a conventional lottery, you buy a ticket and your chances of losing are almost 100 per cent, you expect to lose. But when you’re dealing with people, it’s reversed. You’re winning, of course it’s possible to lose, but the odds are overwhelmingly in our favour. You’ll find kindness in all the places you wouldn’t expect to.’
‘The Impossible Journey’ by Thor Pedersen is published by Robinson and available at Amazon, Winstone’s Books, Bookshop.org and other major retailers.