[masraum]

BBC - Travel - The runaway who travelled the world

Not the entire article, but most of it.

Although he’s ranked the world’s #2 on The Best Traveled website, 62-year-old Barcelona native Jorge Sanchez insists that he is nothing like the other competitive travellers. He comes from a poor background, dropped out of school at 13, and has been on the move ever since, working sporadically in low-paying jobs on farms in Australia, New York restaurants, gold mines in Peru and dozens of other places. But despite all that, he’s managed to travel to all 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, and to every region of most of the world’s countries.

He’s done this by using his charm and ingenuity, and relying on the kindness of strangers. He has slept under bridges in India, in telephone booths in China, up a tree in Brazil, inside a morgue in Liechtenstein, in prisons in Colombia, Paraguay, Georgia and Afghanistan – where he was mistaken for a spy – and as a pilgrim in houses of worship representing every major world religion.

Sanchez’s philosophy is simple. He sees travel as a pilgrimage, a quest for knowledge and learning. He says that if one wants to understand the world, one must see it. But he also believes that every great traveller must also know when it is time to go home.

Q: You ran away from home at 13, leaving a note for your parents that you were off to Western Sahara?

Yes, I left home when I was 13 and caught a boat from Barcelona to Mallorca. By the time I arrived in the Canary Islands, I was 14. My father worked for the gas and electricity company; we had no car. They were poor. I looked at my dad’s atlas at night and I knew that I wanted to explore the world. I just escaped. I knew my parents would be very upset. I left them a message on the table, I told them I’m going and would come back.

In those times the Spanish Legion accepted minors as volunteers in Western Sahara. This was 1968, when it was still a Spanish colony. I joined the Legion, but I spent only a couple of days with the legionnaires because I didn’t like it, and anyway, my intention was to travel to Mauritania.

I became a legionnaire just so I could travel. But when I wasn’t allowed to enter Mauritania without a passport, I immediately left the Legion. I promised my parents that I wouldn’t do that again.

Once I got my passport at 18, I hitchhiked across 11 European countries, taking any kind of job in Paris, London, the Isle of Wight, Geneva and other places to earn money to survive. My goal was to learn languages and the art of travel. After two years of vagabonding in Europe, I had to return to Spain to join the army, which was compulsory during the Franco era.

Q: You mentioned that you had spent at least one night in every country save Liechtenstein and Tajikistan. You went back to Liechtenstein, but the hotels were too expensive so you slept rough. Can you tell us some more unusual places where you have slept?

In fact, that place in Liechtenstein was a morgue, but I didn’t know that when I went to sleep there. At 5 am, a hearse arrived. It woke me up when the driver and a helper opened the door near where I was sleeping on the ground. After a few minutes they returned to the hearse carrying a black coffin. When I saw that, I couldn’t sleep anymore and walked around the streets in the rain until it got light.

I once slept in a tree in Florianopolis, in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, for fear of bandits because I had no money to sleep in a hostel. I have also slept under bridges several times, mainly in India. I slept inside a telephone booth in Chengdu in China.

In 1986, I asked for help in a jail in Ipiales, at the border between Colombia and Ecuador, because there were many rascals following me with sinister intentions. The porters allowed me to spend a night in a cell with several criminals, but they were harmless and didn’t rob or attack me.

I have also slept for free in many religious places: Hindu temples in India; Sikh gurdwaras in Uganda and Tanzania; Muslim tekkes in Uzbekistan; Catholic churches in both Congos (DRC and ROC); Buddhist pagodas in Japan and Bangladesh; and Hebrew synagogues in Israel and Brazil.

I think that a real traveller has to spend at least 24 hours in every one of the 193 countries of the United Nations. I have slept in 192 of them now, only missing Tajikistan, which is why I will travel again to that country in the future.

Q: What have been some of your most important journeys?

The two years I spent vagabonding around Europe showed me that my destiny was to get to know the whole world. And, as compensation for not attending university, I took every continent as a subject, and every country as a lesson.

Also, my first around-the-word-journey, from 1982 to1984, lasted exactly 1,001 days visiting 46 countries. Walking the Camino de Santiago from Saint Jean Pied de Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain in 2003, the same year I visited my last UN country, Somalia, was also an important inner journey. I also did all the alternate Caminos: the French Way, the Original Way, the Mozarabe, the Portuguese Way and the Northern Way.

I made my seventh and final round-the-world journey earlier this year. I wanted to be like Sinbad the Sailor and make seven journeys like him because I read this book as a boy.

Q: Have you had many problems on the road?

I was robbed in Johannesburg, but I still like South Africa. I crossed the border into Afghanistan from Pakistan with no visa in 1989, after the Russians left, and I was jailed for four months in Kabul as a suspected spy. It was kind of like living for free. I was also jailed in Georgia for three days in 2007 after crossing the border from Abkhazia [a breakaway region]. I had to pay a fine of 2,000 euros.

Q: What are your travel plans for 2017?

I’d like to visit Tajikistan and see the Gorno-Badakhshan autonomous region, which someday could be an independent country. Tajikistan is the only UN country I’ve been to where I did not spend the night, so I want to go back and see more.

And I would perhaps like to take a boat up the Yenisei River in Russia to observe the way of life of the Evenki people. When my son, Lázaro, who is now one, [is] about five or six years old, I would like to travel with him and my wife so he can acquire knowledge to understand life on our planet, and the people living in it, and to develop his soul.