How I visited every country in the world - without a single flight

Here is an article from Telegraph Travel about a man who went about travelling the world in a somewhat unconventional manner. This would be a wonderful challenge, but even over four years, it seems a shame that he had to do it all in such whirlwind time and not actually spend much time in each country.

'How I visited every country in the world - without a single flight'

Graham Hughes writes exclusively for Telegraph Travel from South Sudan, explaining the highs and lows of his epic, record-breaking journey around the world without taking the plane.

Graham Hughes in Juba, South Sudan

29 November 2012

On the morning of January 1 2009 I took a ferry from Buenos Aires to Colonia in Uruguay. This would be the first of many border crossings as I embarked on what I knew would be the biggest adventure of my life: the Odyssey Expedition, the first surface journey to every country in the world. It would take me to more than 200 countries, 60 islands and six continents. I thought I could do it in a year. It took the best part of four.

I would be travelling alone, on a shoestring budget and with no professional support: no camera crew following in 4x4s. It was me against the world.

I undertook this challenge for many reasons: to set a Guinness World Record, to raise money for the charity WaterAid, to have great stories to tell the grandchildren. But the main reason was that I wanted to prove it was possible: to show that all the great travel adventures have not already been done; to show that the world isn’t the terrible scary place so often portrayed in the media; to show that, yes, with a British passport, a fistful of dollars and the right amount of tenacity, grit and patience you can – if you really want to – go anywhere.

The inspiration for this expedition came from two sources. The first was Michael Palin’s Around The World In 80 Days. I was about nine years old when it was first shown on the BBC. I loved it, but I always remember being a little bit disappointed that he didn’t go everywhere. The second was my father, Graham Hughes Snr, who – while other parents took their children to Spanish beaches – would drag the family on camping trips around Europe, popping into crazy places like Andorra and Liechtenstein just to say we’d been there. On one occasion we tried to get into East Germany, but they wouldn’t let us across the border. Then, in the summer of 1990, once the Iron Curtain had fallen, we headed back, visiting not just East Germany, but Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland. I still have my piece of the Berlin Wall.

Fast-forward 19 years and here I was charging through South America attempting to be the first person to visit every country without flying. I got to all 12 countries in just two weeks. As I returned across Molston Creek from Surinam into Guyana, I remember thinking “This will be easy!” How wrong I was.

The idea of doing the trip without using aeroplanes came about chiefly because people had already been to every country in the world, but nobody had yet done it without flying. Plus, when you travel through a country on the bus or train, you get a richer, more rewarding experience and you can spend more time with local people. Furthermore, I would have felt dreadful visiting critically endangered nations such as Tuvalu in the Pacific – currently being flooded with salt water every year as a result of global warming – with 155,000 air miles under my belt. Incidentally, it worked out a lot cheaper to do it this way.

The Caribbean was my first stumbling block. I thought it would take two weeks – the islands are incredibly close to each other, usually just an overnight journey on a sailing boat. It took two months. There were no ferries; small cargo ships would do crossings maybe once a week; and nobody wanted to take me to Cuba – the punishment meted out to US citizens by their own government put pretty much everybody off.

Using a combination of sailing boats, banana boats, container ships and cruise liners, I eventually managed to hitchhike my way around the West Indies.

I took a container ship across the Atlantic to Iceland and then headed down to Europe. Ah … Europe! The easiest place in the world to travel around. I bought myself an inter-rail pass and I got to all 50 states in just three weeks.

Then I hit Africa. I travelled down through Morocco and Western Sahara to the border of Mauritania. There I was told visa were no longer being issued on the border. So I headed 1,250 miles back through the Sahara desert to Rabat to get one. I returned to the border the following week. They were now selling visas on the border again. This was my first experience with African bureaucracy. It wouldn’t be my last.

After being told there were no other options, I paid some Senegalese fishermen to take me in a pirogue (a little wooden canoe) to Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa. On arrival in Praia, having survived four days at sea in a leaky boat with no radio, satellite phone or safety equipment, we were all put in jail for six days on suspicion of people smuggling.

After it was all cleared up, I was stuck on the island for six weeks while I waited for a cargo ship to take me – and the fishermen’s pirogue – back. They kept telling me it would be ready to go the next day, then the next day. I ended up being rescued by a German called Milan who took me back to mainland Africa on his sailing boat. The cargo ship in question is now at the bottom of the sea somewhere off the coast of São Tomé .

Two months later, I was arrested again in Brazzaville, Congo. This time they thought I was a spy. I spent another six days in jail, this time in solitary. They deprived me of my shirt, shoes, socks, hat and glasses. It was the worst and most frustrating part of the journey. But once I got out, it just strengthened my resolve to get this damn thing finished.

By the end of the first year I had been to 133 of my (then) list of 200 countries – all of the Americas, Europe and Africa. With only 67 nations left to visit, I was fairly confident of being home for Christmas. Again, I was wrong. Asia was a pain to travel around, not because of corrupt policemen or islands that are difficult to reach, but because of visa regulations. I wasted six weeks in Kuwait waiting for a visa for Saudi Arabia (they wouldn’t issue me with a transit visa), then another four weeks in Dubai waiting for a ship to take me to Pakistan and India.

In December 2010 I reached Papua New Guinea: the 184th nation of the Odyssey Expedition. Asia was done and it was now time to turn my attention to the Pacific. I may have had only 16 countries left to go, but they were all islands. I had to think of a cunning way to visit them all. An Australian offered me a space on his boat which would be sailing to many of the nations I still needed to visit, but after he had kept me hanging on for six months, I realised it was not going to happen.

Then, in July 2011, South Sudan became a country. I now had an extra country to visit. I reverted to plan A: to get around the Pacific Islands using cargo ships. By January 2012 I had made it to New Zealand, where I originally planned to complete the journey, but I still had seven countries left to go: Nauru, Micronesia, Palau, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Seychelles and the aforementioned South Sudan.

I resolved to head back to my hometown of Liverpool and cross these final frontiers along the way. It has taken me most of 2012, but after 1,426 days on the road, on Monday I crossed the border from Uganda into South Sudan and my odyssey was complete.

It has been a hell of a trip. Highlights include watching one of the last space shuttles take off from Florida, dancing with the highlanders of Papua New Guinea, a close encounter with an orang-utan in Borneo and swimming in a lake full of stingless jellyfish in Palau. Obviously, being thrown into jail was a low point, but it was the loss of my sister, Nicola, last year to cancer that made me question whether I really wanted to continue.

One place that will always stick in my mind is Iran. Instead of the stern, joyless place I expected, it turned out to be the warmest and most hospitable nation in the world. I was treated like an honoured guest by everybody I met. On an overnight bus, an old Persian grandmother smiled at me and passed me her mobile phone. I took it from her, a little nonplussed, and put it to my ear. The guy on the other end told me in perfect English that I was sitting behind his grandmother and she was concerned about me. When I asked why, he told me that the bus got in very early the next day and she was worried that I wouldn’t have anything to eat. She wanted to know if she could take me home with her and cook me breakfast.

What I have learnt from this adventure is that there are good people all over the world; people who will go out of their way to help out a stranger in need. I have learnt that people wherever they live are not that different: we all just want a fair deal. My faith in humanity has been restored, although my faith in politicians is even lower than it was when I started. Finally, I’ve learnt that nobody knows what’s waiting at the end of the line, so we might as well enjoy the trip.

Dior Noël au Printemps

Dior Noël au Printemps - Christmas Windows

One day I will have to return to Paris in December to see all the enchanting window displays.

Finito

Ahhh art school marks were released today! My heart is still racing after checking online about half an hour ago. With the confirmation of grades, my exchange is definitely happening! I start class at UCSB in exactly one month. God is so good and so glorious. Words cannot even begin to express how grateful and relieved I am right now. Massive thank you to my amazing family and friends who have helped and supported me through the best and the worst; through late nights and early mornings, extreme excitement and tearful stress - I could not have done any of this without you.

Nuremberg Christmas Market

The famous Nuremberg Christmas Market featured on Euromaxx, Deutsche Welle

Un Matrimonio Movimentato

La Domenica del Corriere

18 maggio 1958

UN MATRIMONIO MOVIMENTATO: Un giovane di parola. Alla vigilia delle nozze Francesco D., abitante in una borgata della Valle Imagna, scese a Bergamo per ritirare il braccialetto che doveva offrire alla fidanzata. Sulla via del ritorno fu investito da un camion. Raggiunse la propria casa. Il mattino dopo, abbondantemente bendato, il giovane, per non mancare alla parola data, si presentò in chiesa. E qui attese la propria sposa. Questa, vedendolo così conciato, svenne. Quando riprese i sensi, la cerimonia ebbe luogo. Il sacerdote benedisse le nozze e si compiacque con Francesco per la forza d'animo.

AN EVENTFUL WEDDING: A young man of his word. On the eve of the wedding of Francesco D., living in a township of the Imagna Valley, went to Italy to pick up the bracelet to be offered to his girlfriend. On the way back he was hit by a truck. He reached his home. The next morning, heavily bandaged, the youth, not to break his word, went to church. And here was waiting his own wife. This, seeing the state he was in, she fainted. When he recovered consciousness, the ceremony took place. The priest blessed the wedding and was pleased with Francesco's fortitude.

Please excuse the TERRIBLE translation, my Italian is still not very good! But I thought the story was too great not to share in English.

One Month

In exactly one month I will be in the United States of America for the very first time!

Tuscan Lunches

'I had never cared about lunch, until I was introduced to Sunday ones in Tuscan vineyards. Celebrations of food and wine amongst friends and family, they transcend the notion of mere meals and transform into a theatre for the senses.

It has much to do with the setting, the compelling beauty of ancient surroundings, of land which has yielded produce for millennia, of eroded stone walls and roads which wind through hills, and row upon row of vines. There is little more glorious then sitting through hours of golden summer afternoons at a long wooden table with twelve or sixteen or twenty others, or in winter warming limbs and souls with fires and food and wine.

Gianfranco has friends at Montespertoli and we go there often, mostly for winter lunches. We crunch up the circular gravel driveway and arrive at the back door, which leads into a vast stone kitchen filled with people. The ancient stove roars with flames, heating an assortment of saucepans that steam forth wonderful aromas. Someone is carving a prosciutto, claret-red slices sliding off the edge of the knife. There are women to stir the saucepans, wash the salad, slice the bread. I make myself useful by carrying cutlery to the dining room where men pose around the leaping fire, clutching glasses of Campari and smoking. Handpainted jugs of water and flowers clutter the table. I set for eighteen people, folding paper napkins into tiny triangles beside each plate. Two-litre bottles of homegrown chianti, translucent red, line up like soldiers. Outside the tall windows mist wraps around bare trees and church spires.

Platters are placed on the table: slices of wild-boar salami, tiny spicy venison sausages, rounds of toast topped with coarse chicken-liver pate sweetened with marsala, shiny black olives tossed in garlic and parsley. Wine is tipped into glasses and wedges of crusty, spongy bread passed around. Lunch has begun.

Pasta comes next, a deep ceramic bowl of steaming spaghetti in a simple tomato sauce fragrant with fresh basil, or a rich cream redolent of wild mushrooms. On top of the fire have been placed two metal grills which clip together to enclose the main course: thick slabs of prime beef, a handful of quails, fat homemade sausages. Passed around the table they are black-striped and crisp from the flames, perfumed with fresh rosemary, garlic and good oil.

Afterward there is a chunk of parmesan, aged and crumbly, and a tangy pecorino from Sardinia to eat with a large bowl of various fruits. This is the winding-down stage of the lunch, when women begin to push back chairs and carry out plates and men light up cigarettes and pour whisky. Coffee brews aromatic from the kitchen, conversation subdues and becomes sleepy, comfortable and confidential, Pastries accompany the coffee: a wealth of shortbreads, crunchy almond biscuits, macaroons and iced eclairs bulging cream. Vin Santo, sweet and dark, is pouted into small glasses; outside the evening has begun to descend and Sunday lunch settles.'

from Amore and Amaretti - Victoria Cosford

The Lost King of France

I have just finished The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury, the biographical account of Marie Antoinette's son who grew up in the tumultuous time of the French Revolution, and whose death has been surrounded by mystery and confusion for centuries.

'In 1795, Louis XVII, the ten-year-old son of Marie-Antoinette, was declared dead by the revolutionary authorities. Immediately, rumours spread that the Prince had escaped from prison and was, in fact, alive. In time, several 'Princes' appeared to claim his name and inheritance, but which, if any, was the real Louis-Charles? The quest for the truth finally runs to the present day as modern DNA testing of a stolen heart leads to an exciting conclusion to this extraordinary two hundred-year-old mystery.'

Additive in its intrigue and well-researched history, this book is one of the best I have read about the French Revolution and the fall of Marie Antoinette and her family from royal splendour. Records of the conditions in which the royal family were imprisoned are heartbreaking, especially the treatment of the child prince. Wonderfully written, I highly recommend The Lost King of France.

Vogue

Piazza San Marco, Venezia

Vogue Australia, 1966

Aiax

An Italian advertisement for Aiax Detergent from 1988

Rome by Valentino

Palazzo Mignanelli, Valentino at his atelier, Palazzo Mignanelli in the centre of Rome

In an article for The Telegraph Travel, Italian fashion designer Valentino writes about the city of Rome.

Rome by Valentino

The fashion designer Valentino pays homage to Rome, the Italian city that inspired him.

Valentino Garavani

30 November 2012

'I moved to Rome in 1958. It’s become my city; it’s as if I was born there. I loved it right from the start. One of the things I like most about it is that it’s the perfect passeggiata city — a city you can get the measure of by simply walking around.

Its monuments, its churches, its streets and piazzas and cobbled lanes unroll before you; you’re surrounded by movement and colour. You go to Trastevere and everyone’s talking in broad Roman dialect, as if in a film starring Alberto Sordi about la vecchia Roma. The whole of humanity is here; in the same street you’ll find shopkeepers alongside aristocrats in their grand, crumbling palazzos. This contrast has an incredible charm, and it’s something you don’t find everywhere in Italy.

So I was immediately fascinated by the city. And of course it has a marvellous climate, and a special quality of light. For a fashion designer, Rome is full of inspiration: there’s a special feeling in the light, the colours, the art, the architecture. I don’t know if the warm reds and oranges that we associate with Roman exteriors influenced my famous “rosso Valentino” shade — they may well have done so subconsciously. But one thing that is undeniable is that I’ve always been obsessed by the search for classical beauty. How could it be otherwise, living in a place like Rome?

One thing I love in clothes, and try to reproduce in my work, is sinuosity: by which I mean clothes that caress the body but also move and float with the person who’s wearing them. Rome is full of movement – it’s a very sinuous city. Think of the Roman Baroque: all those curls and curves that you find carved on church facades. If you transport that into a different medium, a lighter medium, you can create marvellous forms.

I’ve always had my main atelier right in the centre of Rome, a stone’s throw from the Spanish Steps. When I arrived from my apprenticeship in Paris, I had a couture house in Via Condotti. When my business partner Giancarlo Giammetti started helping me we moved into an apartment in Via Gregoriana, then a few years later when space got too tight we moved around the corner into the 16th-century Palazzo Mignanelli.

First we took the whole top floor, then the floor below, then the floor below that – until we’d occupied the whole palazzo, which people now call Palazzo Valentino.

I get out and about in Rome less than I used to, but over the 50 years I’ve been there I’ve covered the length and breadth of the city. One street I love is Via Giulia and the lanes and squares that give on to it, like Renaissance-era Piazza Farnese, which is now the French Embassy. It’s such an elegant street, with its aristocratic palazzos and antique shops and boutiques.

Then there are the consular roads of Ancient Rome. My house is on the corner of the Appia Pignatelli and the Appia Antica, which went all the way down to Brindisi. When I moved there, Appia Pignatelli was a country lane; today it’s a busy road encroached on by ugly blocks of flats. But part of the Roman stretch of the Appia Antica is a no-traffic zone, and with its huge, worn paving stones it’s still a fascinating place where you really feel the spirit of Classical Rome. Maybe that’s why Elizabeth Taylor rented a house there when shooting Cleopatra at the Cinecittà film studios. Today it belongs to Franco Zeffirelli; we’re practically next-door neighbours.

I also love the sweeping view of the centro storico from the Gianicolo hill. And of course the Spanish Steps, which are simply extraordinary, with Bernini’s lovely Barcaccia fountain at the bottom.

I suppose all the places I’ve mentioned are very scenographic, sets just waiting for their actors. Which is why the haute couture fashion shows I organised for three years running on the Spanish Steps and in Piazza Mignanelli were so right for the location. The whole area between Via del Babuino and the Spanish Steps was packed with people; there were cameras swooping around on cranes, beautiful girls were making their entrances from piazza doors and gliding up and down the steps. I was proud to give this to Rome. If you think of those Baroque pageants they used to put on in Roman piazzas, it’s not that different.

But the show to end all shows was in 2007 for the 45th anniversary of my life in fashion. The mayor of Rome allowed us to use the Temple of Venus in the Forum, which is usually off limits to everyone but the Pope, who addresses the crowds from there during the Easter Via Crucis procession.

There were fireworks over the Colosseum and an aerial ballet. Dante Ferretti, who has won three Oscars for his production design, did the lighting, and helped build a Chinese pavilion in the Borghese Gardens for a dinner for 700 people. And we staged an unforgettable show in the old pilgrim hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia, near the Vatican. The three-day extravaganza was my thank-you to the city; I wanted to give something back.

One of my favourite Roman restaurants – a real classic – is Al Moro, near the Trevi Fountain. It was one of Fellini’s favourite places to eat, too; he even gave the former owner a walk-on part in one of his films. I’m not a huge restaurant person – I’m just as happy eating at home or with friends – but when I do go I love these old-fashioned Roman restaurants with old-fashioned service; two others in the same style are Dal Bolognese in Piazza del Popolo and Nino in Via Borgognona, which is just along the road from my atelier.

Romans have always been happy-go-lucky types, good talkers, good eaters and drinkers. They’re more stressed than they used to be – but this is a worldwide thing. At heart, Rome is a vibrant, happy place.'