In 2013, Thor Pedersen left his home in Denmark for the trip of a lifetime. His goal was to travel to every country in the world. He had three rules for his journey. He had to spend at least 24 hours in each country. He couldn't return to Denmark until he had crossed off every nation on the list. And last but not least, no air travel.
In 2013, Thor Pedersen left his home in Denmark for the trip of a lifetime. His goal was to travel to every country in the world. He had three rules for his journey. He had to spend at least 24 hours in each country. He couldn't return to Denmark until he had crossed off every nation on the list. And last but not least, no air travel.
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Thor Pedersen:
When I left home, I thought it was a country project. I thought, I'm going from one country to the next. And within weeks I realized, oh, it's a people project, that this is about who am I meeting and how do people live, and the kindness and the generosity of those that I meet and people just being people and a stranger being a friend you've never met before.
Shelby Stanger:
In 2013, Thor Pedersen left his home in Denmark for the trip of a lifetime. His goal was to travel to every country in the world. He had three rules for his journey. He had to spend at least 24 hours in each country. He couldn't return to Denmark until he had crossed off every nation on the list. And last but not least, no air travel. It's not easy to get to every country in the first place. It becomes even harder when you remove the option to fly from one place to another. Thor had to wait at borders, take long bus rides and network his way onto cargo ships. He estimated that traveling through every country without flying would take him three or four years. Ultimately, it took him almost a decade.
I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living. An REI Co-op Studios production brought to you by Capital One.
When Thor Pedersen started his quest on October 10th, 2013, around 200 people had been to every country in the world. That's fewer people than have been to space or even to the top of Mount Everest. But no one had done it without stepping foot on a plane. Being the first was an exciting idea for Thor. He had been interested in exploration since he was young, and he'd always dreamed of becoming an adventurer.
Thor Pedersen, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living.
Thor Pedersen:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Shelby Stanger:
Yeah, you're in Denmark and you have the wildest of wild ideas we've heard probably kind of ever to travel, to every single country in the world without flying. What sparked this idea?
Thor Pedersen:
Well, I'm just a nutcase. That's the bottom line. I'm certifiable, I'm crazy. No, I grew up, I was intrigued with adventure from very early age. I read about Robin Hood, Robinson Crusoe and Peter Pan. And then I grew up, and then I was reading about proper adventurers, Magellan and Ibn Battuta and the first to go to the highest mountains and the first to go across the planet and deepest forest and the longest rivers. And I was just intrigued by all of that. And I guess at some time during my teenage years, I realized that I was born too late, that there was nothing left for the rest of us. Everything had been done. And then I came across that no one had gone to every country in the world without flying, and I felt that's the last great adventure.
Shelby Stanger:
How did you discover that? Were you Googling?
Thor Pedersen:
I got an email from my father. My father sent me a lot of emails over the years, and I think he sent this one and he didn't think I was going to act on it or anything, but that just made me aware that it was something undone. And I had been to 50 countries, some of it holidays, some of it with family, a lot of it with work. I was 34 years old. I mean every country in the world, I didn't think you could do that. If you wanted to do that, you would have to travel full time. You would probably need to be a millionaire. Then I read that article and you had about 200 people at the time had been to every country in the world. A lot of them were quite young. A lot of them had done it on incredibly tiny budgets, some people cycling a lot and camping. I mean, it was pretty amazing. And it just opened up the horizon for me and I couldn't leave it alone.
Shelby Stanger:
So before you even left, people had to tell you, you're crazy for doing this, there had to have been at least someone.
Thor Pedersen:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. People are still telling me.
Shelby Stanger:
But how did you shush the initial doubters? Because I think one of the hardest parts of a grand adventure like this is starting. Finishing is really hard, but starting is its own adventure.
Thor Pedersen:
Yeah. Well, my parents divorced when I was quite young, so I wanted to tell my parents that I had plans to do this. And I remember first I went to my father and he was very proud of my career within shipping and logistics. So I think he was kind of devastated when I told him I'm going to go to every country without flying. And I spent a lot of time defending that this wasn't some sort of hippie project where I'd be sitting on a beach playing guitar. But at the end of the day, he said, "Listen, you're my son and you're old enough to make your own decisions and whatever you decide to do, you have my support." And today, oh my god, he's my biggest supporter. So he really came on board. But he was one of the big doubters in the beginning.
My mother is a completely different story. There's a reason why they divorced, I guess. So my mother is more like a dreamer. And I remember we're walking down this quiet street and she's pointing out different trees. Over there there's an apple tree and, look, there's a pear tree. There's another apple tree. Yeah. Okay. "Mom, I have something I need to tell you." "Yeah, what is it, my son?" "Okay, I'm going to travel to every country in the world. I'm going to do it without flying. I think I might be gone for three and a half, maybe four years." And she looks at me and she goes, "Oh, that's nice. I also like to travel." And then she said, "I think that's another pear tree over there." I mean, I might as well have told her I was going to the dentist or something like that.
But my mother also came on board. My mother happens to be on Facebook, and whenever she logged on I could see it because she would just like and comment on every post I made.
Shelby Stanger:
Those early days of Facebook were so funny with the parents. That's really cool, Thor, you sound like you had some doubt, but you're like, I can do this.
Thor Pedersen:
Yeah, I had people doubt me throughout though. I mean, it has been such a struggle not to give up because we live in these echo chambers. My echo chamber within this project was that I'm doing something that has significance. This is important, this hasn't been done before. And I build all of this up and I'm sort of in my own bubble. And then every so often someone would tell me that it has no value and I should get a proper job and I should contribute to society and I'm wasting my time. There's been an amazing amount of lack of support throughout a lot of it. There's also been tremendous support from a lot of sources. So it's sort of been balancing out which voices do you want to listen to.
Shelby Stanger:
Before he left Denmark, Thor had worked for 12 years in the shipping and logistics industry. During this career, he was stationed all over the world. He spent time in Libya, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan, the Arctic Circle, and more. Because of his work, Thor already had extensive knowledge about how cargo and materials move around the world. This knowledge became incredibly helpful as he figured out how to travel without flying. Once Thor came up with this wild idea, he couldn't stop thinking about it. In due time, Thor quit his job, packed his bags and started on his way.
So when you had this wild idea, how fast and long did it take you to actually then go for it, and what happened next?
Thor Pedersen:
I found out in early 2013 that this had not been done before, and I figured I was too old. I was 34 years old back then, and all my friends had their first kid and everyone had a career and mowing the lawn and paying your pension and this kind of stuff. And I had just met this wonderful woman who had become a part of my life and I figured I'm next, I'll have a child pretty soon, and this is just a conveyor belt of life.
But I couldn't let this go. I kept toying around with the idea. So I wasn't set on doing it or anything. I just kind of, if I was going to do it, how many countries are there in the world and what would a budget be and how much time would you spend in each country? And the further I got into toying with it, the more it became, I had a fully formed plan eventually, and I just couldn't let it go.
So that entire period would've been about 10 months. And the last, let's say four or five months of that period would've been proper planning where I brought friends on board and they helped me structure it and organize it and find project partners and values and create a project name and a website and all this stuff.
Shelby Stanger:
So what did that look like, the whole planning? How much did you plan and then how much did you figure out on the go?
Thor Pedersen:
Yeah, that's really hard to answer in reality. That's a very, very good question. So I planned the order of the countries, but I didn't plan exactly what was going to go on within those countries. Then the project developed as I left home and traveled through the first few countries, the project formed, I found out what the project was really about. When I left home I thought it was a country project. I thought, I'm going from one country to the next. And within weeks I realized, oh, it's a people project, that this is about who am I meeting and how do people live and the kindness and the generosity of those that I meet. And I started to profile that as well as I could on social media. I'm not a social media genius by any means. But I tried to share this message and I tried to promote every country in a positive sense.
I mean, you can always focus on something. It might be something interesting from history or an invention or a beautiful sunset or someone you met or a meal or something, and sort of play a contrast to everyday media, which happens to be super negative in general. And then as the project grew longer and more and more tiresome and more and more impossible, it became about stubbornness and stamina and trying to achieve something that was basically impossible and never giving up.
Shelby Stanger:
Thor took his commitment to this project really seriously. You might think all this traveling meant that he got to lounge on beautiful beaches, eat incredible food, and see stunning sights, and he did do some of that, but he was always thinking about the next stamp in his passport. In reality, Thor spent most of his waking hours in transit or planning logistics. He took container ships, trains, buses, boats, and even rickshaws to zigzag his way from place to place. Sometimes he even had to return to countries he'd already visited in order to get to the next destination. Cargo ships helped Thor cross large expanses of ocean, but the trips took days, sometimes even weeks.
What was it like to travel on container ships?
Thor Pedersen:
Well, first off, the container ships are highly regulated. The crew on board are pros, they're well-trained. It takes in some cases, years before the crew gets to come on board a ship, just proper training. And passengers have no business on board those vessels. Bringing a passenger on board, you don't know, that passenger might bring a disease on board or press a button they're not supposed to or fall overboard or be annoying or who knows? It's so much easier to say no, and there's no benefit for these container ships, zero benefit in bringing someone on board unless you have a profile of some sort.
If you have a million followers on social media, then you might be able to pitch that. You can show the green initiatives that the shipping company has taken or what a day in a life looks like or something like that, or if you're a journalist. That kind of profiles, you might be able to bargain your way on board. I was able to get on board because I forged connections with shipping companies from day one thinking I was going to need them. And I mean, if you have big reach, a big social profile, you could probably reach out to the HR department or PR departments or maybe the CEO or something like this and get them on board. If you're not, if you're me, then you reach out to the people somewhere in the middle that make decisions and can push the paperwork. And I was successful in doing that.
Shelby Stanger:
There were times when it seemed impossible for Thor to get from point A to point B, and he was tempted to throw in the towel and just fly home. In this case, his stubbornness was a huge benefit to him. Thor is not the kind of guy who gives up. When we come back, Thor tells us about how he used humor to get through tough situations, the biggest hurdle he had to overcome and the incredible beauty he saw on his global adventure.
In 2013, Thor Pedersen left Denmark to travel to every single country in the world. He ended up being away from home for almost a decade. He traveled 223,000 miles, which is the equivalent of nine and a half trips around the earth. To get to every country, he had to be creative. Over the course of his journey, Thor took 40 container ships, 158 trains, 351 buses, 219 taxis, 33 boats, and 43 rickshaws.
What was the craziest way you got from point A to B without flying?
Thor Pedersen:
Oh, I was able to get on board a high-performance yacht from Cuba to Bahamas to an island of millionaires and billionaires. And this high-performance yacht was bought to go faster than the helicopters that the authorities had for very specific reasons, and I was able to get on that. So that was very, very interesting.
Shelby Stanger:
So you hung out with some luxury yacht cruisers.
Thor Pedersen:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
That sounds incredible. How did you talk yourself onto that boat?
Thor Pedersen:
I spent a lot of time at this marina and the harbor master he said I was okay to be there. So I came on the first day and I just went up and down the quay and I tried to get in touch with everyone and every boat. And I had no luck on the first day and I came back on the second day and I ended up speaking to this one guy who was a lot of talk. But he did eventually point at this high-performance yacht, and he said, "Go over and talk to that guy. He comes and goes all the time. He should be able to help you."
So I walked all the way over to the boat that he was pointing at, and the captain who was Italian came up and had a look at me and wanted to hear my story, and I told him about it, and he looked at me and he actually said, "I find that we live in a world where people don't help each other enough, so I want to help you. I want to help you across. But there's a cold front between Cuba and Bahamas, so we need flat water to go with a vessel like this. So we have to wait." And we waited a week and we became friends within that week. And he took me around and showed me a completely different side of Cuba because you do have the haves and the have-nots, and he knew the haves.
Shelby Stanger:
That's interesting. I'm guessing you had to have a lot of cash with you and bribe people basically to get places.
Thor Pedersen:
No. I never bribe anybody. So I made it through every country in the world and never paid a bribe anywhere, and that was a thing for me. But that might also be a part of the reason why it took almost 10 years.
Shelby Stanger:
Good for you.
Thor Pedersen:
I imagine I could have crossed a few borders a little bit faster if I've been willing to bribe people. But in most cases, in relation to bribes, especially checkpoints or borders, it's almost like a game. So these people, they're the ones that have all the time in the world, and you're the one with a schedule. You're probably there with a visa from the country that you're in right now, and that visa is going to expire so they can see exactly how much time you have left. And they might be stationed there for 10 months or a year or two years, who knows how long they're going to be there. And if you somehow can make them believe that you have all the time in the world and that you're willing to camp at that border and just hang around these people and be in their hair, then eventually they're going to give up and go like, "Ah, okay, you can cross get out of here."
Or humor I found, and that's actually for me it's been the fastest way to get things done is if you can make people laugh. If you can make people laugh within the first few seconds, you kind of create some sort of relation to them, you ease up the situation and a couple of handshakes, maybe a selfie, and then you're on your way.
Shelby Stanger:
I'm so glad you talk about that. Do you have any stories of where you use humor to get through?
Thor Pedersen:
I use that a million times over. A lot of these bureaucrats sitting behind desks, just doing paperwork and talking to people and listening to people's requests all day long and so on, you can sort of see they're a little bit dead inside, that kind of people. Like something I would very typically do would be come up to them with a straight face, really look as serious as I possibly could, and then slowly walk up to them and then wait to the moment when they look up at me and then stop and stare at them and just make a big happy face and stretch my arms out to the side. And then 9 times out of 10, they will laugh till they pee. I mean, they'll just break the routine. They'll break the ice with these people, and then they're laughing while they ask you, what do you need? What do you want? And you can just feel that the mood changed.
Now, the one out of 10 that doesn't laugh, that's a big problem.
Shelby Stanger:
Thor's attitude was a huge benefit when it came to confronting difficulties along the way. But there was one obstacle that nothing could have prepared him for. When Thor was just nine countries away from completing his journey, the COVID pandemic hit. He was in Hong Kong when the world shut down. He was supposed to just be passing through. But in February of 2020, suddenly the borders were closed, ships weren't allowing anyone on board, and he was stuck for two years. When he first planned the stop in Hong Kong, he was only supposed to be there for four days. Soon enough, 4 days turned into 11 days, which turned into 6 months. Over a year later, Thor wondered if he would ever leave.
What were the biggest takeaways from being stuck in Hong Kong for those two years?
Thor Pedersen:
A big takeaway is definitely that, and I'm not saying this is the only ingredient in reaching a goal in life, but it is a key ingredient, and that is not giving up. If you believe in what you're doing and you really want it, you can not give up. If you pick up a guitar and your fingers hurt and you don't want to do it after three days, you're not going to learn how to play a guitar. You have to stick with it beyond the point where it doesn't sound good and it hurts your fingers. And the same with education, you have to read the books, you have to pass the exams. Finding a job. Learning a language. Finding the love of your life. I mean, whatever it might be that you want, the success rate, it's only going to be there if you persist. So that's a takeaway from Hong Kong.
The reason why I eventually succeeded was that I had two years where every day was a reason to give up. Nobody knew how long this was going to take, and I persisted. So that was an important lesson.
Shelby Stanger:
So what did you do?
Thor Pedersen:
So in the beginning, it was all about networking. I thought that the reason why I can't get on a ship, the reason why I can't enter the next country is because I haven't met the right people yet. Because that has sort of been the lesson from the previous countries that I had gone to, that when someone tells you no, you say thank you, you smile and you walk away and you find someone else that says yes.
I've told people again and again, imagine a wall and there's a door in the wall and you walk up to the door and the door is locked. What are you going to do? So the obvious thing, knock on the door, okay, you do that. No one comes. What can you do? You can wait. How long are you willing to wait? And is that the most productive way to go about it? Now maybe you can follow the wall and look for another door. Maybe there's another door. And then I think that the success rate is how many doors are you willing to look for? If you want to get on board a container ship, it might be 1,000 doors before you get on a ship. And I have knocked on more doors than you would imagine.
Shelby Stanger:
What did you do when you wanted to give up? I mean, there had to been a point where you were pretty broken.
Thor Pedersen:
Yeah, I mean, I have an incredibly supportive wife, I talked to her. I have good friends. I made good friends in Hong Kong. Sometimes we drowned ourselves in alcohol. That's not a permanent solution, but it can be good for a night. In the beginning it was just about networking. And then after a while, the news broke out. CNN caught on to that I was stuck in Hong Kong, and I figured they were tired of just writing the ordinary stories about the pandemic. So now they had a story about a guy who was stuck in Hong Kong trying to reach every country without flying just nine countries from the finish line. That was a good story.
And then once CNN did their story, I was just doing interviews nonstop for a while. And then with that came a lot of collaboration in Hong Kong. I worked with Hong Kong Tourism board, they caught wind that I was there after the CNN article. Different schools wanted me to do online talks, hiking, meeting up with the guys. After about 11 months, Hong Kong Immigration had a solid talk with me where they went, we cannot continue to extend your visa. There must be an airplane to Denmark. And I went like, yeah, I'm sure there is, but big beautiful project. We do not care about big beautiful project. We are Immigration. You have to get on an airplane back to Denmark. Is there nothing I can do? They went like, listen, you can marry someone from Hong Kong. I think that's a bit extreme. Well, okay, you can start studying and get a student visa. I'm like, okay, I can consider that. Or you can get a job and get a work visa.
So I got a job and I started working at the Danish Siemens Church. So the Danish Siemens service. I had an office and then I had a pass, so I could enter the industrial port and go on board the container ships with a mask and gloves and all this stuff. And then talk to the seafarers and see what they needed and go shopping in Hong Kong and bring it to them because they were quarantined on the ships. So the cargo got to move, because that's important. But the seafarers, they couldn't leave the ships, so I would go shopping for them.
Shelby Stanger:
As far as the nature, is there anything that absolutely surprised you or just you had so much awe took your breath away?
Thor Pedersen:
In the biggest way it happened in Hong Kong. My idea of Hong Kong was a big city life, like basically a mirror image of Manhattan. And as it turns out, Hong Kong is 75% nature and 25% urban setting. And within that 25% you have parks and cemeteries and that kind of stuff. So it's even more nature than the 75%. Hong Kong has mountains and rivers and monkeys and snakes and wild boar and gorgeous beaches like picture perfect beaches and surfing and diving and snorkeling. And my goodness, I fell in love with the nature in Hong Kong.
And as the pandemic broke out and shops closed down and restaurants closed down and everyone had to wear masks and whatnot, Hong Kong always was open to the nature trails. You could always go out and get fresh air. So I did that, and I started hiking avidly, and then I started doing trail running, and I started pushing myself harder and harder and harder.
And my favorite mountain by far is a mountain in Hong Kong called Ma On Shan. So shan is mountain, and ma on means saddle. So it's Saddle Mountain. And I feel a connection to that mountain that I cannot explain. Every time I get near it I feel I have more energy. And there are plenty of mountains in Hong Kong, but that mountain it does something to me. And I think it's beautiful from every angle. I mean, if you could be in love with a mountain now, that would be the case. I really feel this connection to Ma On Shan, and I think it is drop dead beautiful, the landscape around it and the view from the mountain where you go up on top of it as well.
Shelby Stanger:
What did this journey teach you about yourself?
Thor Pedersen:
A million things. I learned about some of my boundaries that I didn't know that I had before because I was pushed to the limit again and again and again and again. This was a huge education in general in, I mean, just list a topic and I probably learned something about it as I went along. But the big ones would be geography and culture and history, people skills, reading people, interview technique, fundraising, running social media, network and negotiation skills, speaking skills, endless.
But yeah, what did I learn? I mean, there's a difference between learning something because you've been told and learning something from experience. And I think most people would probably, if you had to tick a box, do you think people around the world, every country in the world are generally kind and decent and helpful and friendly? Most people would tick the yes, I think so. But then if you push them and you go like, what about North Korea? Or what about Afghanistan? And eventually you'll find a country where people have some sort of bias and they won't feel that people are that kind in that country or that nice in that country or that religion or that whatever. I know they are because I have experienced it. I mean, there's a big difference in being told something and knowing that's a big thing for me coming home knowing that people are just people no matter where you go in the world. And knowing that I would not have been successful with this project if I had not had some sort of help or assistance from a person in every country I went to.
And I think that's the greatest success of this project, it is that someone did help me in every country in the world.
Shelby Stanger:
In January of 2022, Thor was finally able to leave Hong Kong. He checked off his final nine countries ending in the Maldives on May 24th, 2023. From there he took a cargo ship back to Denmark where he was reunited with his friends and family. He completed the trip on July 26th.
Thor, thank you so much for joining us from across the world. It was so fun to hear about your wild adventures. Thor is working on some exciting projects, including a book and a documentary about his big adventure called The Impossible Journey. You can follow Thor on Instagram at Once Upon a Saga to see pictures of his trip and see what Thor is up to now. That's, Once Upon a Saga, O-N-C-E-U-P-O-N-A-S-A-G-A.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hanna Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.