This Man Had A Unique Introduction To Malta As He Travels The World Without Planes
Torbjørn C. Pedersen started a historical journey on 10th October 2013 at 10:10am with one simple (but very ambitious) objective; visiting each and every single country in the world in one unbroken journey, without ever getting on a plane or helicopter. Pederson’s adventure, known as Once Upon A Saga, has 203 countries for him to cross off.
Over three years, four continents and more than half the countries on his list later, Pederson has just arrived in country number 128… Malta!
Pederson, affectionately known as Thor by the many people he’s met during his travels, arrived in Malta after crossing from Egypt on the massive container ship the Gunhilde Maersk.
The voyage from Port Said to Marsaxlokk marked Thor’s tenth passage onboard a container ship and took about 48 hours.
Egypt actually wasn’t the last African country left on Once Upon A Saga‘s list, but Thor recently wrote on his blog that Malta was a necessary next stop. “We have three more African countries to go, and it’s not going to be,” he said. “Libya neighbours Egypt and on a map it all looks so easy, but Libya is not particularly a tourist destination, and it never was.” Thor went on to say that, after conducting loads of research on entering Libya from the Egyptian side, all the sides pointed towards it being a better idea to enter either from the Tunisian side, or on a boat going straight to the capital. “The solution before returning to Africa was Malta,” he said.
“It has been 760 days since I entered Africa and now I will briefly leave her,” Thor continued. “Reaching Malta is going to be great! When I disembark, I will see my father for the first time in more than 2 years! He has decided to fly to Malta for a few days to come and encourage me and take care of me with a nice hotel, good food, and probably a drink or two as well!”
Pederson is a Goodwill Ambassador of the Danish Red Cross, and is doing this as both a positive promotion of each country “to counter the negatives we see in the media”, and as a positive promotion of the Red Cross Red Crescent, which was founded in 1863 and today spans across 190 countries. Once Upon A Saga has already been featured on BBC, National Geographic, Forbes, Al Jazeera, RTE, Lonely Planet and Vice.
Here’s wishing Mr. Pederson has an awesome stay in Malta!
Shout-out to Nichlas for the tip.