Torbjørn 'Thor' Pedersen is on a mission to visit every country in the world in a single journey, without taking any flights. After over six years on the road and a budget of $20 a day, he's just nine countries from his goal — but he's stuck in Hong Kong.
Torbjørn"Thor" Pedersen is on a mission to visit every country in the world in a single journey, without taking a single flight.
The 41-year-old, who sports road-worn Black Salomon X Ultra trekking trainers and a chest-length beard, is clearly itching to keep moving. During his childhood, his family flitted between Toronto, Vancouver and New Jersey for his father's job in the textile industry and visited his mother's side of the family in Finland during summer and winter holidays.
The idea to attempt this particular challenge -- to visit every country on a nonstop journey without taking a single flight -- came to him serendipitously, through an article his father sent him. Pedersen imposed exceptionally strict rules on himself: He must spend at least 24 hours in every country and can't return home until he's done.
Pedersen has relied heavily on cargo ships to travel long distances, working closely with companies such as Maersk, Blue Water Shipping, Swire, MSC, Pacific international Lines, Neptune and Columbia. "There's nothing stopping this journey from ending, except for me ... But I have to ask myself: Do I want to be the person who quit? Or do I want to be able to say that I never quit, not even once. Not when I had malaria. Not when I was losing my girlfriend. Not when my grandmother died. Not when I lost financial backing. Not when I was in pain," he says.
"So it took a loop to get to Jordan, and it's been like that a few times. If you're going without flying, then you're really locked into the countries that are surrounding you. And you need to plan it well."In many cases, bureaucracy made the processes all the more excruciating. At the land border with Angola, for example, he was turned away at first because he didn't speak native French.
"Whenever I needed help someone reached out and helped me. But I always figured out a solution -- and I did it the right way. I never offered a single bribe."While Pedersen is usually meticulous about planning, an episode in Cameroon sent him spiraling. At 3 a.m., a pair of headlights flashed ahead. Three uniformed men walked into the street, waving their rifles, and demanded Pedersen and his taxi driver get out of the car.
"We'd be talking for a couple of days if I were to tell you about all of the bad things that happened. But we'd need months to cover all the good things -- that's the balance." He decided to use the extra days to explore the Western Province. While Pedersen was riding alone on a ferry, an elderly man invited him to an island called Vori Vori to experience life in his village.
"It was chaos. I thought we were going to sink and die. But when the storm passed, the water was like dark blue oil, so still and smooth. I have never seen an ocean like that." He's reached 194 countries, with just nine to go: Palau, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, New Zealand, Australia, Sri Lanka and the grand finale in Maldives.
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