![]() ![]() Once they reached Panama, the pair flew over the Darien Gap, a treacherous stretch of jungle between Panama and Colombia. “It’s just nice to have someone to share some moments with.” “She’s been fantastic,” he says of Savannah. He felt that having a furry friend beside him who could “keep watch” at night would make all the difference, and this has proved to be true. While he initially had no intention of getting a dog, Turcich struggled to relax, particularly while bedding down at campsites, and would constantly wake up during the night convinced he could “hear something coming.” Around four months in, Turcich acquired his walking companion, puppy Savannah, from an animal shelter in Austin, Texas. The first stage of the trip saw him walk from New Jersey to Panama. He also wasn’t hugely experienced in hiking, although he’d previously completed a 10-day hike with a friend, as well as a few weekend hikes. ![]() He inevitably experienced various highs and lows along the way, including being invited to local weddings in both Turkey (or Türkiye) and Uzbekistan and being held at knife point while in Panama.īefore he began the walk, Turcich had done very little traveling other than visiting England, Ireland and Wales during a high school exchange trip, and he’d also holidayed in Canada and the Dominican Republic. The first occurred when Turcich fell ill with a bacterial infection, which took him several months to recover from, and the second was due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The entire journey ended up taking seven years, mainly due to two significant delays. The pair in an orange field in Valencia, Spain back in 2018. “And that proved pretty accurate for the actual walking.” “I thought it would be about five and a half years,” he says. Turcich says he devised his route with two major factors in mind – he wanted to “hit every continent and travel with as little bureaucratic trouble” as possible. He set off on April 2, 2015, just before his 26th birthday, pushing a baby stroller containing hiking gear, a sleeping bag, a laptop, a DSLR camera and a plastic crate, which he used to store his food. “And he just wanted to support me however he could.”Īlmost nine years after he first came up with the idea, Turcich took the first step of his walk around the world. “He happened to know Ann Marie and her family,” he says. However, shortly before he was due to leave, the owner of a local company, Philadelphia Sign, found out about his plans and decided to sponsor his trip. He managed to save enough to last him around two years on the road by working during the summer while he was at college, and moving back in with his parents after he graduated. Once he’d committed to the task, Turcich started planning out the route, while also trying to raise funding for his travels. “I didn’t just want to go to Paris and Machu Picchu, I really wanted to understand the world and see how people were living day to day.” “It seemed like the best way to understand the world and be forced into new places,” he says. ![]() Turcich, who has been compared to Forrest Gump, the character Tom Hanks played in the 1994 movie, decided he needed travel and adventure in his life and began looking into all the different ways he couldĪfter reading about Steven Newman, listed by Guinness World Records as the first person to walk around the world, and walking adventurer Karl Bushby, who has been circumnavigating the globe on foot since 1998, Turcich became set on taking on this challenge himself. And it sunk in that I was going to die and it could happen at any moment. “It was very formative for me,” he explains. The inspiration for the trip stemmed from a sad loss in 2006, when his long-time friend Ann Marie died in a jet ski accident at the age of 17. Tom Turcich, from New Jersey, and his dog Savannah spent seven years walking around the world together. ![]()
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