Esquire:

Graham Hughes, a gregarious thirty-four-year-old ginger from Liverpool, recently became the first person to travel to every country on earth without taking a plane. It took him four years:

Any other lessons from your journey?

My main lesson from all of this: You can’t judge a people by the actions of their government. The friendliest country I went to, by a mile, was Iran. I just wasn’t expecting that. I was on this overnight bus, and this little old Persian grandmother was sitting in front of me, nattering away on a mobile phone. She turned around and waved at me and gave me her phone. I didn’t know what she wanted me to do with it. I said “Hello,” and there was a guy on the other end, perfect English. He said that his grandmother was concerned about me—the bus gets in very early in the morning, and she’s worried that you won’t have anywhere to go or anything to eat, so she wants to know if she can take you home with her so she can cook you breakfast. Faith in humanity, restored. That’s the lesson: People are good. The spirit of common decency is everywhere you go. Maybe I’m just the luckiest motherfucker in the world, but I went to every country, and I didn’t get robbed, I didn’t get beaten up—I didn’t even get ill...

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