Real travel stories from around the world

Explore the first-hand travel stories selected for the TripMag collection, including adventures, world records and remarkable journeys.

• The Family Who Sold Everything to Travel the World — Garrett Gee sold his startup Scan to Snapchat for 54 million dollars. Then he sold the house, the cars, the furniture, packed four backpacks and a stroller, and walked his three small children onto a plane. A decade later they have never come back.
• The Man Who Visited Every Country on Earth (And Made It Look Easy) — Drew Binsky was a 21-year-old American teaching English in Seoul when he booked his first overnight bus across a land border. Nine years later he had stood in every country recognised by the United Nations and become one of the most-watched travel storytellers on Earth.
• She Visited Every Country in 18 Months and Set a World Record — On 24 July 2015 Cassie De Pecol left Palau with one carry-on bag and a sponsored mission called Expedition 196. The goal was outrageous: stand in every UN country, plus Taiwan and Palestine, as fast as humanly possible. She did it in 18 months and 26 days.
• The First Black Woman to Visit Every Country in the World — On 6 October 2019, on a small beach in the Seychelles, Jessica Nabongo planted a flag in the sand and quietly became the first documented Black woman to have stood in every country on Earth. The road to that beach had been thirty-five years long.
• Youngest American to Visit Every Country, at Age 21 — Lexie Alford was nine months old on her first international flight, twelve on her first solo trip and twenty-one when she finished every country on Earth. The record was logged at twenty-one years and seven months, the youngest fully documented case of every-country travel.
• 1000 Days, 1000 One-Minute Videos, One Backpack — On 9 April 2016 a 24-year-old Harvard graduate quit his six-figure software job in New York and decided to film a one-minute video every single day for the next 1000 days. He did not miss one. He ended on day 1000 in front of 13 million Facebook fans.
• Every Country on Earth Without a Single Flight — On 1 January 2009 a Liverpool filmmaker set out from Uruguay with twenty dollars a day and a single rule. Reach every country on Earth using only buses, trains, ferries and the occasional cargo ship. No planes. He finished on 26 November 2012 in South Sudan.
• He Cycled the World for Five Decades and Never Came Home — In November 1962 a 22-year-old German factory worker rode his bicycle out of his hometown of Hovelhof and did not return for fifty-two years. He cycled, by his own count, more than 648,000 kilometres across 196 countries. The bicycle is now in a museum.
• 23 Years on the Road: The Longest Continuous Backpacker — A Canadian carpenter walked out of his apartment in Calgary in 1990 with a single backpack. He came home, almost by accident, in 2013. In between he had visited every country on Earth on a budget of around ten dollars a day and acquired the title of the world's longest continuous backpacker.
• 127 Hours: The Climber Who Cut Off His Own Arm to Survive — On the afternoon of 26 April 2003, a 27-year-old American climber dislodged an 800-pound boulder in a slot canyon in southern Utah. The boulder pinned his right arm against the wall. He was 8 miles from the nearest road. No one knew where he was. Five days later he amputated the arm with a dull pocket knife and walked out.
• Three Weeks Lost in the Amazon and the Friend Who Never Stopped Searching — In November 1981 four backpackers walked into the Bolivian Amazon following a charismatic Austrian guide who turned out to be a dangerous fraud. Two were never seen again. A third was rescued after 19 days alone in the jungle. The story is now a film called Jungle.
• The First Solo Unsupported Crossing of Antarctica — On 26 December 2018, in a 54-day race across the Antarctic continent, American adventurer Colin O'Brady became the first person to ski solo and unsupported from the Ross Ice Shelf to the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, hauling a 170-kilogram sled across 1,500 kilometres of polar plateau.
• 860 Days Walking the Length of the Amazon River — On 9 August 2010 a former British army officer walked out of the Amazon onto a beach in Maruda, Brazil, having spent 860 days walking the entire length of the Amazon river from its Andean source. No one had ever done it before.
• The First Woman to Ski Across Antarctica Alone — On 23 January 2012, after 59 days alone, British physicist Felicity Aston became the first woman ever to ski across Antarctica alone and only the third person of any nationality to do it without kite assistance. The 1,744-kilometre traverse cost her 13 kilograms of body weight and one of her sleds.
• The Blind Climber Who Reached the Summit of Everest — On 25 May 2001, an American climber became the first and so far only blind man in history to stand on the summit of Mount Everest. He had been completely blind since the age of thirteen. He had been climbing seriously for fifteen years. The summit photograph shows him smiling and looking, by habit, slightly above the camera.
• He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at the Age of 67 — Between October 2013 and April 2014, a 67-year-old retired Polish engineer paddled, alone and without sails or a motor, from Lisbon to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, in a 7-metre kayak. The crossing took 196 days. He went on to do a third Atlantic kayak crossing at the age of 70.
• Around the World by Bicycle in 78 Days — Between 2 July and 18 September 2017 a Scottish endurance cyclist rode a bicycle, alone, eastward around the planet, covering 18,000 miles in 78 days and 14 hours. He had set himself the deadline of 80 days, in deliberate homage to Jules Verne. He beat the previous world record by 44 days.
• London to London the Long Way Round, by Human Power — On 1 April 2011 a 25-year-old British rower set out from Tower Bridge in a small kayak. Four and a half years, two oceans, four continents and one major mental breakdown later, she rowed back under the same bridge, having travelled 20,000 miles around the world entirely by her own muscle power.
• Walking Home From Chile to England — On 1 November 1998 a 29-year-old former British paratrooper started walking north from the tip of South America. His destination was his front door in Hull, England. Twenty-six years later he is still walking.
• Fastest Crossing of the Sahara by Bicycle — In early 2011 a 32-year-old Iranian-British financial analyst rode a touring bicycle from Algiers to Khartoum across the breadth of the Sahara, breaking the world record for the fastest crossing of the desert by bicycle. He covered 1,732 miles in 13 days and 5 hours.
• Six Mountain Ranges, Six Continents, All Solo and Unsupported — Between 2016 and 2022 a Canadian-born adventurer ran solo and unsupported across one mountain range on every inhabited continent. The Tien Shan in Central Asia. The High Atlas in Morocco. The Bolivian Andes. The Southern Alps in New Zealand. The Transylvanian Carpathians. The Canadian Rockies. No support vehicle, no resupply boxes, just her two feet and a single small backpack.
• Solo Kayak Down the Niger River, the Way Mungo Park Tried — In late 2002 an American writer paddled, alone, six hundred miles down the Niger river through Mali, from Old Segou to Timbuktu, retracing the 1796 route of Scottish explorer Mungo Park. She was the first person ever to have completed the descent solo, and she did most of it in a small inflatable two-metre kayak.
• 76 Days Adrift in the Atlantic in a Five-Foot Rubber Raft — On the night of 5 February 1982, six days out of the Canary Islands, an American sailor's small sloop was hit by an unknown object and sank in under five minutes. He spent the next 76 days drifting alone in a five-foot inflatable life raft across the Atlantic, surviving on speared fish and a tiny solar still.
• Adrift Alone for 41 Days in a Wrecked Yacht — In October 1983 a 23-year-old American sailor was knocked unconscious below decks when her yacht hit the centre of Hurricane Raymond in the open Pacific. When she woke 27 hours later her fiance was gone, the mast was broken, and she was 1,500 miles from the nearest port. She sailed the wreck home alone in 41 days.
• She Fell Two Miles From a Plane and Walked Out of the Amazon — On Christmas Eve 1971, LANSA Flight 508 broke apart in a thunderstorm 3,000 metres above the Peruvian Amazon. 91 people died. A 17-year-old German schoolgirl, still strapped to her seat, fell two miles into the jungle. She walked out, alone, eleven days later.
• 71 Days in the Australian Outback Drinking Pond Water and Eating Lizards — In early 2006 a 35-year-old Australian truck driver was, by his own account, drugged and dumped in a shallow grave in the middle of the Northern Territory desert. He climbed out, walked to a small water hole, and survived there alone for 71 days on raw frogs, lizards and pond water before being found by a group of station hands.
• Lost in the Sahara for Nine Days During the Marathon des Sables — On the fourth day of the 1994 Marathon des Sables, a 39-year-old Italian policeman ran into a Saharan sandstorm and was lost for nine days. He survived by drinking his own urine and the blood of bats. He was found in Algeria, 300 kilometres off the race course.
• Touching the Void: The Climber His Partner Had Already Cut Loose — On the night of 8 June 1985, a young British climber lay dying at the bottom of a crevasse high in the Peruvian Andes. His partner, believing him dead, had cut the rope and climbed back to base camp alone. Joe Simpson then crawled, broken-legged, four miles down the mountain over three days. The book he wrote became one of the most famous in mountaineering history.
• Left For Dead Twice on Everest, and Walked Down — On the night of 10 May 1996, eight climbers died in the worst single storm in Everest's recorded history. A 49-year-old Dallas pathologist was twice declared dead and left in the snow at 8,000 metres. He woke up. He stood up. He walked down. He lost his nose, his right hand and most of his left hand. He has, in the 28 years since, walked back into the rest of his life.
• Born on a Boat in the Amazon, Raised in Three Languages — In 2017 an American National Geographic writer and his Brazilian wife had their first daughter, Violet, in a small boat clinic on the Rio Negro in the Brazilian Amazon. They have, since, raised her on the road. She has slept in twenty-eight countries before her seventh birthday and speaks three languages.
• The TikTok Generation's First Solo Round-the-World Trip — In June 2022, three weeks after her twentieth birthday, a small-town Tennessee college student left her sophomore year at the University of Memphis and bought a one-way ticket to Lisbon with two thousand dollars saved from a campus coffee-shop job. She returned twenty-two months later having slept in sixty-seven countries and gathered, by accidental documentary daily TikTok upload, one of the largest young female travel audiences on the platform.
• Amanda Eller: Seventeen Days Lost in a Maui Forest — In May 2019, Amanda Eller went missing during a walk in Maui’s Makawao Forest Reserve. Volunteers found her alive 17 days later near a steep ravine.