I visited every country in the world without flying

Telegraph

11-04-2025

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.