‘Around the World in 8000 Days’

Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian

By NITIN GAIROLA

This happens to be my 2^nd anniversary writing my world travel features for Uttarakhand’s favorite local English newspaper – Garhwal Post. This also happens to be my 100^th Sunday feature in Garhwal Post. Besides I have a live session coming up this Saturday evening on 25^th October at the Valley of Words Literature Festival in Dehradun and it is titled ‘Around the World with Nitin Gairola (in conversation with Ratna Manucha)’. With so many things falling in place, it clearly is a time for some personal reflection. So I thought I should look back on my travel story and also look forward, which is why this feature has been named ‘Around the World in 8000 Days’. Let me explain…

My travel story is rather different from Jules Verne’s 1872 classic ‘Around the World in 80 days’. For starters, you can increase 80 by a factor of 100. You see 8000 days is almost 22 years and I started my world travels just over 18 years ago. I intend to wrap my world tour over the next 4 odd years after I have visited ‘everything’ and then focus on writing a bit more about all the adventures. So that does add to 22 years (18 + 4) and in any case, 8000 days has a nice ring to it.

But to be clear to all new readers (the regular ones would know) that this has not been a continuous 8000-day journey unlike Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout’s circumnavigation of the world in 80 days. I have been employed for all these 18 years so far and hence it’s a collection of 2-3 week adventures at best but done consistently and with high intensity. Barring 2020 (for obvious reasons), I have travelled to remote parts of the world each year since 2007 – but never more than 3 trips in a year. So that’s around 55-60 world trips and by making them intensely packed in terms of the itinerary, it does add up to a lot of places been and seen. And its been executed in a very systematic way as well with hardly any repetitions. There is no room for nostalgia when you are short of time and/or money but have big dreams. That’s why I call this a very well-planned operation in terms of the unwavering purpose of seeing the entire natural world and tireless execution over decades. It’s also been a passion project, so it’s a lot more than cold execution.

Today, 18 years hence, I am on the verge of becoming the first to visit every natural world biome i.e. every Desert, Forest, Grassland, Tundra & Ice eco-region on Earth besides every major country in the world. I call this the ‘Borderless Biomes’ project and I have given it a timeline of 4-5 more years from now since I do intend to visit it all by then. That way I can say I have done it a year before my 50^th birthday on 5^th April 2030. ‘In my book’ that’s a nice way to celebrate the 50^th.

The ‘Borderless Biomes’ bit came when I realized the one major issue we have in this world – And that is our borders. Specifically, in the case of world travel the controls are represented by our passports. But the world has many trans-border wildlife parks, not to mention multi-nation forests, deserts, grasslands and so much more. The wild is the wild because it roams free whereas the movements of us humans have been controlled by the powers that be. If you realized, Jules Verne’s French character, Passepartout, has also come about after some clever word play with ‘passport’ – which was a much older English word at that time.

It is these multiple fast-paced journeys done slowly over decades (rather than all in one go) that have taken me and in most cases my partner Richa, to every ‘corner’ of the globe. We have been to both polar regions, to every continent, sailed over all oceans and have done overland adventures in every major desert, forest, grassland, tundra & ice region save for 3 deserts, 3 forests and 3 grasslands. Pure chance that 3 regions of each of these 3 biome types are left, with all regions of the other 2 biomes (tundra & ice) already ticked off.

But if you ask me what I value or have taken away from this multi-decade ‘around the world’ adventure(s), then I would say it is discovering my love for the natural world and later understanding it a bit better. That story is so much more fulfilling than how it all began, since it started almost like the bet that Phileas Fogg made at the Reform Club in London to travel around the world. My bet was to visit every country in the world, as most extreme travellers aspire to achieve and blurt it out over a drink too many. It is only later that I realized there is a far more beautiful natural world of these various biomes and the wildlife that calls it home. And the biomes also make up our world just as the countries make up the political world. In fact, the natural world has been in existence for a lot longer than the political world of countries and it too has its defined borders, but not the kind that deliberately block movement. And how can anyone block movement since it is the very essence of travel.

So from trying to be like the other 400 odd people around the world (and 6 Indians) who have visited every country on Earth, I instead decided to make Sir David Attenborough my hero and North Star. I started mapping out my own journeys to fascinating places in the natural world, some of which he had popularized through his various epic documentaries such as Planet Earth, Our Planet and others. The best part was that his episodes were actually dedicated to each biome (such as deserts, forests, grasslands, ice etc.). It can be said that he is the one to have demystified the natural world and have it reach the homes and minds of millions around the globe. While it is still 100 times easier to explain your goal of travelling to every country than to every biome on Earth, I notice people today are able to relate to the natural world a bit better than in the past. In any case, my hedge is to also visit every major country on Earth so that my political map is fully coloured as well, with no white spaces left. That’s the back up plan in case anyone looks blank when I say ‘biomes’.

I can’t wait for this coming Saturday evening to speak my thoughts on world travel at the Valley of Words event and to answer all the questions that the much accomplished and celebrated Doon-based author, Ratna Manucha, will ask. More so, can’t wait to interact with the wonderful readers and regulars at Valley of Words as it celebrates its 9^th edition at the iconic Hotel Madhuban in Dehradun. This was incidentally the very place where I got engaged to Richa back in January 2010 when we had not even been on a single world trip together. Life has come full circle for us just as it did for Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout. It has indeed been an ‘Around the World’ adventure.

(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He is on the verge of becoming the first to travel to every Desert, Forest, Grassland, Tundra & Ice biomes on Earth. Nitin has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. Reach him at: www.facebook.com/ MostTravelledIndian/)