Close to a million miles, 72 journeys and 203 countries
have been fitted into Albert Podell's life, as he claims
to
be one of only a couple of people who have visited every
country on Earth. Seven of those countries no longer
exist. The journeys spanned more than fifty years and were
not without hardship, danger, and fun. The adventures
described in AROUND THE WORLD IN FIFTY YEARS are those in
the out of the way lands, the remote, hard to enter
nations
and the less understood societies.
Beginning in America, the author first travelled to Canada
as a young man. However the first anecdote he gives us,
laying an enticing trail of crumbs, is about a Botswana
day
when he found himself between a herd of aggressive Cape
buffalo, hippos, crocodiles and a river. Podell's parents
had come to Brooklyn from Eastern Europe and his first
foray to Europe, with the delights of Madrid and Paris,
convinced him to see the world. Editing travel magazine
Argosy, he teamed up with a reporter and aimed to complete
the longest land journey around the world anyone had
accomplished, in 1964. Their four-wheel-drive journey
through chaotic countries was inevitably scarred by
accident and tragedy; a photographer was killed by the
Viet
Cong in Cambodia. The reader does have to wonder at the
men's sanity to undertake such a journey during these
years.
Algeria, the start of the journey's troubles, provides
some
cracking stories; camping in what turned out to be a live
minefield, having the police chief insist on buying a
nurse
travelling with the men. Once you've read this far you'll
be hooked. Some borders were closed; some cities abounded
with thieves and hawkers; some people were helpful and
hardworking. And some beach campsites were crawling with
leeches and leaping bloodsucking bugs. That's just North
Africa. Wait'll you see what happened when Pakistan
declared war while they were crossing the country.
Many countries distrusted journalists and searched and
interrogated the travellers, while batches of developed
photos came back minus the ones showing poverty. By the
end
of 2003 Albert Podell counted up the countries he'd
visited
and made it 110; then he decided to go for the maximum.
Read the riveting AROUND THE WORLD IN 50 YEARS for an
earthy, risk-laden description of how he achieved this
amazing feat.
This is the inspiring story of an ordinary guy who
achieved
two great goals that others had told him were impossible —
first by setting a record for the longest automobile
journey
ever made around the world — in the course of which he
blasted his way out of minefields, survived a breakdown
atop
the Peak of Death, came within seconds of being lynched in
Pakistan, and lost three of the five men who started with
him, two to disease, one to the Vietcong.
After that — although it took him 47 more years – Albert
Podell set another record by going to every country on
Earth. He achieved this by surviving riots, revolutions,
civil wars, trigger-happy child soldiers, voodoo priests,
robbers, pickpockets, corrupt cops, and Cape buffalo. He
went around, under, or through every kind of earthquake,
cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, snowstorm, and
sandstorm that Nature threw at him. He ate everything from
old camel meat and rats to dung beetle and the brain of a
live monkey. And he overcame attacks by crocodiles,
hippos,
anacondas, giant leeches, flying crabs — and several
beautiful girlfriends who insisted that he stop this
nonsense and marry them.
Albert Podell’s Around the World in 50 Years is a
remarkable
and meaningful tale of quiet courage, dogged persistence,
undying determination, and an uncanny ability to extricate
himself from one perilous situation after another — and
return with some of the most memorable, frightening,
and
hilarious adventure stories you have ever read.
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