The Great
Circumnavigations

Before travel blogs, people went around the world and wrote books, walked in wooden clogs, or simply vanished into the attempt. This page keeps their company.

Dumitru Dan: the first trip around the world on foot

Between 1910 and 1923, Romanian professor Dumitru Dan went in the first trip around the world on foot. Of course, he had to cross two oceans, but he continued to walk back and forth even when he was on board the ships. The trip was sponsored by Touring Clube de France who would award 100,000 French francs to whoever took the trip. At the time, Dumitru and his three fellow countrymen Paul Pârvu, George Negreanu, and Alexandru Pascu were young College students and took on the challenge. They returned to Romania to gather information and resources and start training. They learned how to play the flute and dance traditional Romanian folk dances. They left in 1910 with their dog Harap. The next year, when traveling through Mumbai the Raja invited them to a feast. After the meal, three of them left to look for food for the next leg of the trip, but Alexandru Pascu stayed. That was the last time they would see him alive. He died of an opium overdose. George Negreanu died two years later when the three friends were crossing a mountainous region in China. He was leading the way but didn’t see a crack in the middle of the trail, and he fell. His friends rescued him and took him to the hospital but he died before a doctor could see him. Lastly, Paul Pârvu didn’t resist the trip. Years of walking nonstop led to gangrene that eventually led to amputating both legs. They were in Jacksonville, Florida at the time. Paul Pârvu stayed behind with the dog, but he passed away in May 1915. Only Dumitru finished. He had to put the journey on hold in 1916 because of World War I, but he would complete the challenge in 1923. Tragically, inflation took a big chunk off the award money. If we compare it to our current time, the initial award was around 500,000 Euros, but it shrunk to 40,000 by the time Dumitru got the money. According to his records, he crossed five continents, 76 countries, and 1,500 cities, wearing out 497 pairs of shoes. Dumitru Dan was the first of a list of 12 people who walked around the world . In our current century, there are records of the most bizarre trips: Mike Golding did two consecutive round-the-world trips in 2001, one in each direction. Between 2010 and 2012, Planet Solar became the first solar-powered ship to travel around the world. Between 2011 and 2012, Laura Dekker sailed around the planet alone. She was 14 when she started her trip. Between 2008 and 2011, Japanese Minoru Saito did the same thing as Dekker, except he became the oldest person to achieve it at age 77.

The Transglobe Expedition

Of all the trips around the world, this one was special: it was the first one, and perhaps the only one, that happened from North to South, crossing both poles. And without traveling by air! The journey started in 1979 when British adventurers Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton left Greenwich towards the South Pole. Ranulph Fiennes, a former military at the British SAS, had started to plan the trip in 1972 inspired by his wife Ginny, collecting all the sponsors he needed for the trip. The travel’s original goal was to travel around the Earth from North to South, so most of the crossing was aboard Benjamin Bowring, a ship prepared for the polar nature. It’s a 65 meters long ship, built in 1952, and used on the set of Hell Below Zero, a 1954 film inspired by the book The White South. They started the trip in the most straightforward way: crossing Europe, by driving across France and Spain, then crossing Africa, across the Sahara desert, and boarding the ship in Abidjan. Next stop would be South Africa. On 22 December Bennie Bee, as the ship was known by the crew, sailed away to Antarctica. They reached the South-African base SANAE II on 4 January, unloading all the gear the team would need to face crossing the ice continent. Despite the reduced number of crew members, they had 200 tons of cargo, that they had to carry on snowmobiles to the first base at 72 55’S 3 29’W, about 290 km from the coast. They built four flimsy cardboard shelters, with just a thin layer of insulation. They would have to do against the severe polar winter. One tent was for accommodation, one for the generator, one for the radio, and one for the VLF (Very Low Frequency) equipment. When winter came, the shelters were immediately covered in ice, and they dug tunnels to store gear and supplies and to travel between shelters. The season went by with a series of minor incidents: small fires, frost bites, carbon monoxide poisoning, personal conflicts caused by continued coexistence in a small space. And then in July, the generator was broken beyond repair. On 5 August the sun returned which urged them to get everything ready to cross the continent by only three people: Ranulph, Oliver, and Charles. They left on 29 October with Ollie, that would keep them company until the pole, each on a snowmobile pulling a sleigh carrying 700 kg of cargo. They reached the South Pole station on 14 December, three weeks ahead of schedule. They stayed there the 23, with air support responsible for their supplies. Crossing the Antarctic ended on 11 January.

The Journeys of Mike Horn

In 1999, Mike Horn started a round-the-world trip at the equator, but this was not the only thing that set his trip apart. In addition to following the most challenging route, facing the weather and the difficulties posed by nature at latitude zero, Mike did it on his own and his own transportation, without flights nor public transportation. Mike Horn, a South-African living in Switzerland, sailed from the west coast of Africa to Brazil. He crossed that vast country on foot, on a bicycle, and a canoe, passing the unsurpassable Amazon and then the Andes until reaching the Equator, the country. Next, he crossed the Pacific across the bigger islands in Indonesia, tackling the jungle in Borneo and Sumatra, until he boarded his reliable 8-meter long trimaran again. On the other side of the Indian Ocean, he reached the east coast of Africa, where he faced the last but not most simple leg of his adventure: crossing the black continent from coast to coast. He did it alone and on foot! He reached his starting point 18 months later. He had completed his Latitude Zero Expedition which granted him a meeting in Rome with Pope John Paull II. If this first round the world trip is not enough to add Mike Horn to the list of greatest explorers in our planet, his second large project will. He’s doing a second round the world trip from North to South, something only the British team Ranulph Fiennes and Charles R. Burton have done so far. Except Mike will raise the bar by taking the trip or at least crossing the polar continents alone. At the time I’m writing this article, Mike is halfway through this great adventure, that you can follow on his official website or Twitter , and he’ll use a Class G car for the overland parts of his trip. Mike sailed from Monaco Yacht Club aboard his sailboat Pangaea toward Namibia. From there he crossed the desert to his birth country South Africa, where he boarded Pangaea again and sailed to the coast of Antarctica. From now on, only the future will tell us what will happen, but the plan is to ski across the frozen continent, sail to New Zealand and Australia, explore Papua New Guinea on land, cross towards Asia and then immerse himself in the vastness of Siberia. At Kamchatka, he’ll board once more his sailboat to reach the Arctic. He’ll ski across that continent and then across Greenland, the world’s largest island. Once that is done, he’ll sail back on Pangaea to Monaco, his starting point.

Around the World in Literature

The first literary reference to a round-the-world trip was written by Greek traveler Pausanias who lived around year 100, translated into French in 1797. Of course, the world according to Pausanias wouldn’t be the same as we know today. He meant the world of the classic age, which was limited to part of Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the near East. In 1699, Italian adventurer Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri wrote Voyage du Tour du Monde, published in France a few years later. That was probably the first written record of a round-the-world trip for fun and using only public transportation. The Italian wrote fascinating stories about the world in the 17th century, including the exotic Persia, the territories under the ruling of the Ottoman Empire, and the faraway Hindustan and China. The trips around the world become popular in the mid 19th century thanks to the improvement of transportation that meant that the (almost) everyday man and woman could embark on such adventures. In 1853, Jean Arago published Voyage autour du Monde. In 1871, the Union Pacific Railroad Company published Around the World by Steam, via Pacific Railway and, that same year, Edmund Planchut publishes Around the World in A Hundred and Twenty Days. Between 1870 and 1871, North-American William Perry Fogg travels around the world, writing his experiences and impressions on a series of letters published in the Cleveland Leader newspaper that later became a book published in 1872, Round the World: Letters from Japan, China, India, and Egypt. The year 1872 was a decisive one in the History of around the world traveling. Thomas Cook organized the first tour of this kind, that took seven months and was documented in a series of letters that were made public the next year, Letter from the Sea and from Foreign Lands, Descriptive of a tour Round the World. More importantly, in 1872 Jules Verne published the book that would become the most famous and inspiring work for generations of travelers: Around the World in 80 Days.

Phileas Fogg and the Most Famous Round the World Trip

Jules Verne, the famous French writer who had already published “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “In Search of the Castaways,” and “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” gave the world one of its most acclaimed masterpieces: “Around the World in 80 Days”. Jules Verne’s books filled the imagination of generations, inspiring countless books and movies, and inspiring the work of science fiction writers. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that Jules Verne wrote that book in the mid 19th century when you think about how current the events and technology seem. That is, of course, a characteristic of science fiction books but let’s face it, the idea of traveling around the world at that time was as crazy as the adventures of the Nautilus submarine in the deep ocean (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea). But let’s keep things in perspective: at the time the book “Around the World in 80 Days” was published, the golden age of geography and world exploration had just begun. It would be another 15 years until the two officers of the Portuguese Navy, Roberto Ivens and Hermenegildo Capelo, crossed Africa from Angola to the opposite coast. If crossing a relatively narrow continent was considered a feat at the time, can you imagine traveling around the world in 80 days? That’s what the friends of Phileas Fogg, the book’s main character, thought too. But let’s start at the beginning: the story begins in London, where our friend lives. His past is not revealed, but we know he’s wealthy, living well, and a regular customer at the Reform Club (a historic gentleman’s club in London). This is the place where a friendly argument starts after reading an article on the Daily Telegraph. According to the British newspaper, a new railway in India will make it possible to travel around the world in just 80 days. A piece of news to which Fogg’s friends react with a firm “impossible!” But Fogg believes it can be done. A debate ensues and ends with a bet: the club members will give Phileas Fogg 20,000 Pounds (something like 2 million Euros today) if he departures the next day and returns to meet them 80 days later. It’s the first day of October so our friend must catch the train out of London the next day and return on 21 December.

Itinerary of Around the World in 80 Days

Pages full of travel adventures follow. The route of Fogg and his French servant Jean Passepartout takes them through Europe until the Italian city of Brindisi, on the heel of that country’s boot-shaped map, where they board a steamship to cross the Suez Canal (a 7-day trip) towards Mumbai (another 13 days). Once in India, they travel by train to Calcutta (3 days) where they take a steamship to the south seas of China, getting off in Hong Kong (13 days). From there they take another ship to Yokohama in Japan (6 days). The most extended leg of the trip, across the Pacific Ocean, is of course done on another steamship to San Francisco. From the US West Coast to the East Coast, they take a train to New York (7 days). The adventure is almost complete. All they need is to cross the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool (8 days). If you did the math, you’d notice that 79 days went by. Will Fogg and his loyal servant Passepartout reach the Reform Club in time to win the bet? I can’t answer that question without spoiling the book, and it wouldn’t be fair to those who haven’t read the story yet. Let’s talk a bit about the background of this book, Jules Verne’s most famous work at least in English. He wrote “Around the World in 80 Days” during the Prussian Franco War (1870-1871), at a time he was serving on the French Coast Guard. Shrewd, he realized the importance of three critical events in World History: the Suez Canal (1869), the railroad connecting San Francisco to New York (1869), and the railroad that crossed the Indian sub-continent (1870), which caused the bet to take place in the book. For more than a century, and despite its success, Verne’s book was not taken seriously. There were no studies about “Around the World in 80 Days” until 2006. It wasn’t until the 21st century that we had good quality translations and essays and studies about this book by Verne.

Around the World on Television

Although there were several television shows produced around the name and the theme of trips around the world, most of them just rode the wave and had separate episodes produced in different parts of the world, without any logical sequence. That is the case with Around the World , by Arthur von Wiesenberg, that despite the name it’s just a popular travel talk show, or Rev Runs Around the World produced by the Travel Channel. Famous Rev Runs travels around the world with his wife Justine and his children Russy and Miley with roundtrip plane tickets. Each episode documents the place they’re visiting and not the actual trip between locations. The sequence of episodes is random, without a natural route in mind. There is, however, a television show produced by the BBC in 1989 focusing on the adventure of traveling around the world, “Michael Palin: Around the World in 80 Days”. Palin, a well-known British comedian, and actor, became even more famous after the show and one of the most popular travel writers of his generation. The idea behind the series was to take Jules Verne’s classic and recreate the steps of the fictional character, Phileas Fogg, putting Michael Palin at the center of the action as the intrepid explorer who turns what the French author created into reality. The conditions were the same: Palin had to travel around the world in 80 days without flying. Which he achieved, trying to stay true to Phileas Fogg’s original route. He took a crew of five people, appropriately named Passepartout, a reference to Fogg’s loyal French servant. In the seven-episode series, Michael Palin departs from the real Reform Club on Pall Mall in London, crossing the English Channel, traveling overland to Venice where he boards a ship to Athens. He continues from there, with a pit stop in Crete, and reaches Egypt. A series of real-life adventures take place. In Innsbruck, the expedition came to a halt due to a strike of Italian railroad workers, and they lose the connection to Muscat, Oman in Saudi Arabia. A diplomatic marathon follows, and the group finally gets permission to drive across Saudi Arabia, a part of the trip that’s only shown in photos on the show. In Dubai, they find a dhow (a traditional boat) willing to take them to India. When they reach Mumbai, they find out they’re a week behind on the fictional trip they wish to recreate. After traveling by train, they reach the port of Madras, where it won’t be easy to find a ship to take them to Singapore. Palin finally reaches an understanding with a Yugoslavian captain that agrees to take him.