Who among us has not heard of Jules Verne’s wonderful novel “Around the World in 80 Days”. Those who haven’t read it, however, have seen the movie by Frank Coraci. But how long would such a journey really take?
The aforementioned stories posed a challenge to their protagonists, because how could they? Go around the world in 80 days? Not likely. After all, it took Columbus two months and nine days to reach the shores of the strange land he called India (and today the continent is called America). Another daredevil who challenged the globe was the famous traveler and explorer Ferdinand Magellan. He began his expedition in 1519 – it lasted another three years (as you can see, 80 days could surprise people!). Another noteworthy figure is Aleksander Doba, a Polish kayaker, who at an old age single-handedly bounced off the shores of Europe to cross the entire Atlantic Ocean. He accomplished this after 167 days on the open sea. However, the closest to Fileas Fogg’s story was Gil Azevedo, a Portuguese who decided to circumnavigate the globe and did it in 55 hours and 47 minutes! Thus, Gil entered in the Guinness Book of Records
It would all depend on timing and transportation, and – the real goal. Would we simply want to circumnavigate the globe in the shortest possible time, or would we like to get a taste of foreign cultures along the way? Assuming the latter, we certainly won’t beat Gil Azevedo’s record, but does anyone need that?
In principle, such a journey can be done independently, just look at the example of Aleksander Doba, although rather not everyone should go on such a brave venture. The point, however, remains the same – we can make the whole journey by ourselves, without buying trips. We need only two factors: time and money, which are always the worst
However, there are huge advantages of independent travel: no one imposes anything, we choose ourselves where and from where we go. This is a great comfort, because the tourist offices do not always decide to visit the places that suit us best. We can then stop in India or Madagascar and spend there as much time as we would like – but it will extend our trip, which is associated with higher costs. Bureaus, on the other hand, allow you to save some money.
It’s also worth mentioning that if we decided to follow in the footsteps of the first travelers, i.e. by sea, our trip would not only take a huge amount of cash, but also time. However, if we hurried, who knows, maybe we would make it in a few months.
If we are talking about a cruise purchased by a travel agency, then such a trip will last about half a year (at least 4-5 months). In the case of air travel, the route is much shorter and then we will spend only a month on the road. However, coming back to the cruises, they are launched every year by specific lines: Cunard Line, Holland America Line, Costa Cruises, Silversea and Regent Seven Seas. The average cost is just over 160K. If we decided to travel in luxury, then we should prepare an amount reaching over 210 thousand zlotys
Main photo: Pixabay/pexels.com
