First person to visit every country twice says one was worse than expected
The first person to visit every country in the world twice has said one nation surprised him with how much worse than his expectations it was.
Gunnar Garfors, 48, has travelled to every single country around the world - including war-torn areas like Eritrea. He says his highlights include going snorkelling in the Marshall Islands, seeing lions in Botswana and eating sushi for breakfast in Tokyo.
The Norwegian used his job as a broadcast journalist to fund his initial challenge from 2008 to 2013, sacrificing family life, a car and a comfortable home in order to visit different countries. Then, in 2018, he set himself the goal of doing it all over again.
Gunnar said: “Becoming the first person to travel the world twice has been humbling... there are just too many incredible places and experiences in the world. I just became competitive with myself - the more I travelled, the more I wanted to travel.
“I couldn’t quit my job - so I did it using my holidays, weekends and long weekends. I’d fly out somewhere on the Tuesday after work, fly back into Oslo on Sunday night and go to work Monday morning.”
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Gunnar has no plans to stop travelling (Gunnar Garfors / SWNS)The Mirror caught up with Gunnar as he visited Sao Tome, an island off Gabon that he is stopping off in for a third time as part of research for a book about the equator and Artic Circle. The book will focus on climate change, and the impact it is having on more remote, vulnerable parts of the world.
He explained what led him to take on the challenge of visiting 195 countries for a second time. "When I finished the first time in 2013 in Cape Verde, I promised myself I would never do anything as stupid as this again, and I'd never have a hobby that involved counting stuff.
"But I just love seeing places and meeting people. I continued travelling and wrote a book about the 20 least visit countries in the world. Then someone said 'you've been to a lot of countries twice, only 30 countries to go for the second one'.
"I said 'f*** it, why not.' I was never planning on that. No country in the world deserves to be visited just once. You really should visit every country properly. I usually spend one to two weeks in each country."
Gunnar, who loves meeting a big variety of different people on his travels, said "there is no country I'd not want to go back to" when asked which place he couldn't quite get his head around. While he often objects to how governments run nations, the traveller has always found welcoming people wherever he goes.
The one place that confounded his expectations for the wrong reasons is North Korea. "It is a good example for the wrong reason. You go there and realise it's much worse. You can't comprehend what's happening in North Korea. For negative reasons," Gunnar said.
“The city elite have lots of food and money to go around - country people can’t even afford tractors. They live in dire conditions.”
Saudi Arabia proved to be a much better place to visit than the Nordic explorer thought. Although he takes big issue with many of the things the government does, he found the "hospitality to be second to none".
"There are quite a few countries I wouldn't mind living in for several years. I enjoy the scenery and going into nature. I love New Zealand, central Asia, Canada, Iceland. Romania is an undervalued one. It has great people and the possibility to engage with nature and good food.
"South Korea is incredible. Japan and Madagascar are truly amazing. Sao Tome is not bad but the roads here are atrocious."
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Gunnar says he was always fascinated by travelling when he was little - his dad, Reidar, now 83, was a cruise ship doctor in the 1970s and sailed around the world for a living. He’d record cassette tapes for Gunnar and his six siblings, talking all about the different countries he’d visit - like Brunei, Canada and the Philippines.
He said: “I always wanted to travel when I was a small kid. Our dad was a doctor on a cruise ship. He sailed the Pacific - and went to Philippines, Canada, Brunei and Malaysia. We couldn’t read - so he’d send us cassette tapes instead of letters. He told us these incredible stories from distant countries - it was very inspiring.”
At the age of 29, Gunnar set himself a challenge to travel to seven countries with the suffix “-stan” - Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. He started in October 2004, and completed it in October 2009 - which was when he decided to travel to every country around the world.
Gunnar said: “I didn’t have a plan, I just wanted another go at travelling to different countries. I was very curious - I wanted to see new places, meet locals and have new experiences. I’d been invited to two weddings in India - and planned to go to China with friends.
“The trouble is, when I started visiting more countries, I began to keep count. And once you start keeping count, you have to finish.”
The challenge became Gunnar’s top priority - and he had to sacrifice a lot to complete it. He couldn't see his family at weekends, he couldn’t afford a car, "fancy" clothes or a nice home. But he didn't feel he had to sacrifice his dating life - often taking ex-girlfriends on his travels.
In the space of five years, Gunnar visited 198 countries - including North Korea, Cape Verde and Yemen.
“There were so many highlights,” he added. “The last one I went to was Cape Verde. I realised this was actually going to work - and I wanted to have a party for all my family and friends. It was legendary - so many people close to me came to this party. When I saw them there, my body was covered in goose bumps.
"I experienced the mayhem at the Tokyo fish market early in the morning when the fish came in - and stayed to have world-class sashimi (raw fish) and sushi for breakfast. There was also Eritrea - which was such a hard country to even get to, due to the politics there. But the country is incredible - the people there are so hospitable. They invite you home for dinner, take you on trips, without knowing who you are."
When it comes to the idea of stopping travelling, Gunnar says he has plenty of energy and appetite yet. "I typically wear out all my friends, they joke I have ADHD times four. I have a lot of energy. I get energy from travel and meeting the old friends and new people. That never seems to happen," he said.
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