Around the World in 50 Years

 

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About the Author

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To

my beloved mother and father,

may they rest in peace,

and may they forgive me

for having assured them

that this journey was

“nothing to worry about.”

 

We will either find a way, or make one.

—HANNIBAL

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU,
Walden

Yes, Al, there is a certain publicity value to your being killed on this quest, but most publishers want a living author who can do TV and press interviews, so, on balance, it's a bit better to stay alive. If you can.

—TONY OUTHWAITE, LITERARY AGENT

One of the many spectacular rock formations in the desert of Saudi Arabia near Al-Ula, north of Jeddah. After Saudi Arabia stopped issuing visas to tourists several years ago, I was able to slip in as part of an archaeological group.

 

FOREWORD

Harold Stephens

This is the best adventure/travel book written in this young century.

It's a robust, rugged, insightful, humorous, raunchy, wise, thrilling, intensely readable saga of how my favorite travel buddy, Albert Podell, overcame tremendous odds and hardships to achieve an almost-impossible dream of visiting every country on earth.

This book has it all—adventures, disasters, survival, victories, wit, wisdom, intriguing facts, fascinating figures, perceptive observations, graphic descriptions, history, geography, culture, politics, revolution, war, intrigue, spies, sin, sex, snakes, and sharks, all conveyed in a smooth, engaging, page-turning style that makes you feel that you are right there beside Al as he gets into one jam after another. And out.

Around the World in 50 Years
memorializes, and takes us along on, a unique human achievement. To my knowledge, there is no other book by, or about, anyone, living or dead, who achieved this remarkable feat of perseverance, resourcefulness, and quiet courage.

It is not a travel guide, yet there is much that Al did from which a traveler could take guidance. Nor is it a book of traditional explorations or corny claims; Al did not go to any place “where no man has ever gone before,” but he went everywhere with a brave heart, clear eyes, and an inquiring mind that made astute observations and discerned remarkable relationships, all told in a bright, vigorous, and eminently enjoyable style.

Al's travels required 102 separate journeys that encompassed more than 50 years and close to a million arduous miles. He highlights the major troubles, accidents, wars, breakdowns, robberies, problems, hassles, dangers, detours, misunderstandings, nut cases, and whack jobs he needed to overcome to survive to 196 countries. It describes only those travels and events that were particularly adventurous or engrossing and only those countries that were exotic or far from the tourist track, like Nauru and Lesotho, Benin and Tuvalu, Palau and East Timor, Saudi Arabia and Guinea, North Korea and Somalia, Congo and Rwanda and Yemen.

This fact-packed book is loaded with fascinating encounters with voodoo sacrifice rituals, king tides, tiger sharks, fruit-bat pie, the Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon, Cuban counterintelligence agents, Havana hookers, killer hippos, Zambezi River rafting, Kalahari sandboarding, primitive bungee jumping, bizarre foods, the New Guinea Wigmen, camel caravans, the slave trade, lovable lemurs, swimming with penguins, Islamic politics, the drowning nation, the Lord's Resistance Army, how to greet a gorilla, hunting with nomads, Pure Blonde Naked Pale Ale, and much, much, much more, all recounted in a fresh, funny, and exuberantly rollicking manner.

Although primarily an adventure tale, it provides a special background for understanding today's world and its dangers, splendors, animosities, oddities, politics, problems, and people.

Al would be the first to admit that this is not a tale of exceptional heroism, because the many dangerous situations and hair-raising adventures in which he found himself did not spring from purposeful attempts to put himself in harm's way, but were simply the result of ordinary ill luck, inadvertence, misplaced trust, foolish notions of invincibility, or just the way the cookie crumbled. Nor is it a book of miracles, because Al paid a high price for his many misadventures in injuries, illnesses, expenses, and girlfriends who gave up waiting for him to finish.

It's a book about the dedication, persistence, and indomitable will of a guy who spent a good part of his life pursuing his goal on ancient Third World airplanes; leaky, overloaded foreign ferries; and broken-down, jam-packed bush taxis driven on rutted roads at 100 mph by wild kids who never passed a driving test. He unrolled his sleeping bag at border posts, campsites, roadsides, jungles, glaciers, airport floors, and in hostels,
dahk
bungalows, tents, trailers, trees, teepees, campers, cars, caravansaries, desert dugouts, and flea-bag motels; alternately sweating and freezing; dodging dengue-fever mosquitoes by day and malarial ones by night; lugging more than 130 pounds on some trips while trying to get by on others with a Speedo and sandals; en route to 203 countries (seven of which no longer exist) to reach the 196 officially recognized today.

It's a damn good read! One of the best of its kind since Marco Polo. We learn what this world is really like and come to understand how, by just showing up for the job, day after day; persevering in the face of myriad misadventures, year after year; and never giving up, decade after decade, you can achieve your impossible dream.

—
Bangkok, Thailand

October 2014

Harold Stephens
is the author of 24 books of travel and adventure. He was, with Albert Podell, the co-leader of the Trans World Record Expedition and coauthor on
Who Needs a Road?,
which is still in print after almost 50 years, and about 40 pages of which are used or adapted in chapters 2 to 5 and 7 of this book.

 

CHAPTER 1

Between a Croc and a Hard Place

I was on a quest to visit every country on earth, but I was about to get stuck, between a croc and a hard place.

I had just reached the inner section of the Okavango Delta of Botswana, where one of Africa's mightiest rivers fans out into the sands of the Kalahari Desert. I'd taken a jouncing two-hour ride in an ancient Land Cruiser and a two-hour voyage through tall reeds and flowering lily pads in a
mokoro,
a pole-pushed dugout canoe with the shape (and, it sometimes seemed, the width) of a large banana. Then an hour's walk through the bush to where a guide promised I'd find many harmless photogenic herbivores.

I was kneeling down, doing what any
Outside
subscriber does when he isn't able to get the latest issues: examining half a dozen differing piles of animal excrement. The medium-sized crap with the pointy end was clearly from a porcupine. The huge tan ones of barely digested grass, tree branches, and palm nuts could only be an elephant dump. The blackish globular clusters were wildebeest. The tiny pellets were springbok. The small balls were zebra. The golf-ball-sized globes that contained fur and tiny mouse bones were from either a serval or a caracal; and—
holy shit!
—those fresh piles of pancake-shaped dung looked much like the spoor of Cape buffalo, the meanest and most dangerous animal in Africa, and one I'd been assured was
not
in the vicinity. But the scatological evidence was compelling: The turds looked like no other animal spoor, and, much worse, they were warm, almost steaming, no more than half an hour old.