Paulo Mansur Raymundo
Paulo Mansur Raymundo - Brazil
He visited all the 193 independent countries of the UN and all 7 continents, 293/330 countries and territories on the Travelers' Century Club list, 918/1 500 countries and territories on the MTP list, 863/1 301 regions on the NomadMania list, 318/1 199 UNESCO World Heritage Site and spent 32 years on the road.
Paulo Mansur Raymundo - Brazil
Paulo is an Electronics Engineer and Manager with over 4 decades of international experience in technology-based industries, having lived and worked in 12 countries with Schlumberger, the world’s leading supplier of technology and information solutions to the oil industry. “Regarding traveling, I have never been motivated by setting world records, or by visiting all countries in the world; if I did it was because I needed to get where I was going, it's my life,” he says. Racking up the number of countries and destinations, or competitive traveling and collecting passport stamps doesn't inspire him. He believes in traveling with quality by spending at least a few days in each place, mingling with the locals and doing as they do in their daily lives. His goals as a traveler are:
- To interact with foreign cultures and expose himself to different values as a way of self-knowledge.
- To research the genealogy of his ancestors and visit members of his family that spread all over the world long ago.
- To visit astronomical observatories - he has visited 15 out of the 16 largest optical astronomical telescopes in the world, often being invited to stay overnight to observe. In 2002 he became the first Brazilian scientist to ever discover a comet.
- To see the underwater world - he has spent 482 sea days and scuba dived 341 times in 98 TCC countries on 6 continents.
- To lecture/visit/study at the main universities and learning centers in the world.
- To visit the main temples of every religion, to visit National Parks, to run road races - Paulo ran the Boston Marathon in 1998, among other races.
Paulo likes to come back to the same countries and explore them in greater detail, revisiting places already familiar to him. In 2012 Paulo became the first Brazilian, first South American and first Latin American to visit every country in the world. Until a decade or so ago, Brazilians needed a visa in advance for most countries. Nowadays (2024) Brazilians need a visa for only 56 destinations. Paulo has so far visited over 100 UN member countries two or more times. He has had the opportunity to observe the human behavior and cultural aspects of the people in countries where he has lived, worked, studied or visited since 1980. He has been to several of the most hostile territories in the world, visiting amazing places and getting involved in dramatic and sometimes hilarious situations. “Traveling independently allows someone to absorb an extraordinary amount of cultural knowledge and self-knowledge that can not be bought,” he says. “You experience situations that can not be experienced by reading a book, watching a movie, or attending an intensive course. Traveling was much harder in the early 80s when a letter would take as many as three months to get to its destination; a phone call had to be booked a day ahead of time and you had to stay put for that day until the operator called you back. Nowadays we can video-call instantaneously anybody, anywhere in the world. However, I continue traveling the way I always did, trying to be disconnected without phones and social networks, and I continue having more adventures every year than most people have in a lifetime,” he adds.
Paulo has stayed in all sorts of places, from luxurious chain hotels to the most simple and rudimentary Buddhist Temples at the foot of the Himalayas. “Either having three meals per day or spending a week without eating any solid food, sometimes didn't make much of a difference. Crossing the Sahara Desert, leading scientific expeditions searching for oil in remote locations where almost nobody had ever been before, and getting used to extreme temperatures from -30C to +52C was part of my daily routine,” Paulo says. He was in Beirut during the civil war and visited most of the obscure Eastern European countries during the Soviet Union period. In 1981 Paulo became an eyewitness to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's assassination. Paulo also discovered a new species of crab in East Timor and took DNA samples from whale sharks in Mozambique. His family thought he was dead when Korean Air Lines flight 007 was mistakenly shot down by the Soviet Union on September 1, 1983, over Sakhalin Island; luckily, Paulo had changed his travel plans and had flown to Tahiti that night. He was in Kenya during an earthquake, saw volcanic eruptions in Indonesia, Guatemala and Italy, devastating hurricanes in Barbados and the Northern Marianas, a huge tornado in Georgia and even ran a marathon climbing the Swiss Alps. In 1996 Paulo had the honor to be elected Member of the prestigious The Explorers Club The Explorers Club. He has also traveled solo overland across the whole African continent continuously for over one year, hitchhiking, taking local slow public buses and collective taxis, cargo trucks and canoes, having crossed eleven war zones unarmed and without a bodyguard, carrying only 7 kg of luggage for the sole reason of simplifying material concerns and seeking rich life experiences.
Paulo’s unique criteria for counting a place as visited are when all of the following have been met whenever possible:
1 - Slept at least 3 nights (neither in trains nor in buses) or spent at least 3 days (not inside a hostel/hotel, hospital, prison, airport, or land border post) in the place, preferably between two weeks and one month in each country when time is available and your visa allows him to.
2 - Had at least two main meals in a local eatery consisting of local dishes.
3 - Walked at least 4 hours inside a city/village.
4 - Spent at least one hour in a central public place just people-watching.
5 - Interacted with at least one local (via phone or internet doesn't count) using at least 10 words in the local language and was understood by the local person, without the help of a translation app. Counting "1 to 10" doesn't count :-)
6 - Visited at least one main market/souk.
7 - Visited at least one of their main places of religious worship.
8 - Visited at least one of their main universities.
A few travels that Paulo is most proud of:
- Visiting most Caribbean islands in 1980-1981 while living in Trinidad Tobago and Barbados for over one year.
- Traveling for 42 days on his first RTW trip in 1981 with unlimited stops for US$1,999 in a time when travel guidebooks were almost non-existent. He had to choose his flights using the “ABC World Airways Guide” - a two-volume monthly publication that listed all flights connecting all points of the planet.
- Traveling extensively throughout Asia in 1982 and 1983 without seeing any tourists in many countries like Pakistan, Burma, Nepal and Taiwan.
- Traveling six months by train throughout Europe in 1986, including Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, countries where he didn't see any tourists.
- Traveling overland crossing the South American Pacific Coast on local buses for six months.
- Traveling for six months in 2004 through many Pacific Ocean islands that he had not visited between 1981 and 1983.
- His 7th trip to Africa, when he spent over one year traveling solo overland crossing the continent clockwise. In a few countries, he pretended to be a missionary just to protect his cash, which was USD 8,300 at the start of his trip.
- Traveling five months overland in 2009, crossing Central Asia, parts of China and parts of India.
- Traveling in 2011 through regions of China and India that he had not visited yet.
Em 2012 Paulo tornou-se o primeiro brasileiro a visitar todos os países do mundo, assim como o primeiro sul-americano e primeiro latino-americano a visitar todos os países do mundo.
Paulo voou o equivalente a 114 voltas ao mundo desde 1980, tendo cruzado a linha do equador 152 vezes, e 263 fronteiras via terrestre. Ele já visitou mais de 100 países da ONU duas ou mais vezes. Em 2006-2007 Paulo viajou continuamente pela África por mais de 1 ano, atravessando 11 zonas de guerra desarmado e sem guarda-costas, carregando apenas 7 kg de bagagem.
Paulo Mansur Raymundo - website The 20 Best Travelers of the World
