Thor Pedersen has just set a new world record that’s never going to be beaten.
He’s the first person to visit every country in the world without flying.
READ MORE: Man who bought lifetime airline pass in 1990 has saved $2.44 MILLION on travel
The rules he set for himself were fairly simple and straightforward.
He decided he wasn’t going to use any form of aircraft for his journey, and he had to spend at least 24 hours in each country.
He documented his trip by sharing images and videos to his Instagram account, and it’s honestly impressive.
It took him 10 years to pull it off, covering 260,000 miles (418,000 km).
Starting in his home country Denmark, he set out on this mission and actually managed to do it.
This included visiting countries like Syria, Sudan and North Korea, among others.
Thor Pedersen said he wanted to do it simply because no one had ever done it before.
He figured it would take him around four years, but it ended up taking a decade.
Obviously, a lot of the delay had to do with the pandemic.
At one point, he ended up being stuck in Hong Kong for months.
As you can imagine, it took him so long not only because walking or driving or riding a bus is obviously slower than flying, but something else as well.
For geographical and geopolitical reasons, there are countries that are nearly impossible to visit.
And it becomes even more difficult if you can’t fly.
Furthermore, some countries deny you entry as a tourist if you have stamps or markings in your passport from certain countries.
This means he probably had to visit certain countries in a very specific order to be allowed in.
We can only imagine how complicated it must have been him for him.
