Danish Man Visits Every Country Without Flying in Decade-Long Trek
A Danish man who claims to have visited every country in the world without flying has returned home after nearly a decade.
Torbjørn Pedersen set off for his trip in October 2013. At that time, he somewhat under-estimated the commitment it would require.
“I thought it would take a maximum of four years in total,” Pedersen told Agence-France Presse upon his return to Denmark. “Maybe three-and-a-half if I went a little fast.”
Inevitably, he was traveling for 3,512 days.
Inspired by a newspaper article shown to him by his father, Pedersen made the entire journey “completely without flying,” using buses, trains, boats, and his own feet in an effort to meet new people.
Pedersen tracked his journey through a blog entitled Once Upon a Saga. He claims that the trip required 10 separate passports, and that for the duration he lived off of just $20 per day.
In late May, the Dane arrived in the Maldives, his 203rd and final country.
On Wednesday, he docked in the Danish port city of Aarhu on a Maersk container vessel.
“HOME!!!” Pedersen captioned a post to his Instagram. “The project was a resounding SUCCESS…Today marks its COMPLETION as I return to Denmark.”
Yet Pedersen expressed mixed feelings while speaking with AFP. “I've been dreaming about coming back home and having [the trip] over with and done…At the same time, I'm anxious about the future. A lot of things are up in the air and in the unknown.”
One person who will help Pedersen re-acclimate is his wife, Le Gjerum. They began dating before 2013, and she visited her husband 27 times during his decade-long trip. On the 10th of these visits, Pedersen proposed to her.
Yet the weary traveler didn’t anticipate getting stuck in Hong Kong for two years during the pandemic. During this time, he and Gjerum decided to marry in an online ceremony.
Luckily, she was able to travel to the Maldives to celebrate the last leg of Pedersen’s extraordinary journey with him. However, Gjerum opted to head home by plane before her husband began his much longer journey home.
While she was happy to support Pedersen in his venture, Gjerum says she is looking forward to living “a daily life” with her husband.
