Businessman spends £350k to visit every country on earth in record time (just don't ask to see his snaps)



He spent £350,000 to visit every country on earth in the shortest time possible and thereby earnt himself a mention in the Guinness Book of Records - just don't expect to be thrilled by his pictures.

While businessman Kashi Samaddar, 55, dodged bullets and bombs in some of the world's more unstable countries, and lived to tell the tale, his photographic skills are somewhat wanting as these two examples (below) demonstrate.

Globe trotter: Kashi Samaddar poses for a bizarre picture with a local and a pram in Greenland

That'll be London, then: Mr Samaddar with a friend during his visit to the British capital

He began his epic journey to 194 countries with a visit to Holland in July 2002 and finished his mission in Kosovo in May of this year - six years, ten months and seven days later - with plenty of drama along the way.

Mr Samaddar, an Indian national who now lives in Dubai, said of his trip to Afghanistan: 'The hotel where I stayed in Kabul was blown apart an hour after I left my room.

'I have travelled through regions with bullets flying thick and fast all around. It's a miracle I didn't get killed.

'In East Timor, I stayed without food for three days and had to pay a local lad a few hundred dollars for some bananas.

'In Nauru, my flight was cancelled eight times and I had to overstay for one-and-a-half months.'

Missed opportunity: The kind of photo Mr Samaddar could have taken on his visit to the Cook Islands

Considering his feat the snaps he took along the way are a touch underwhelming, many of which feature him in offices and hotel lobbies instead of at top tourist sights.

On his trip to London there are no shots of Big Ben, Tower Bridge, or Buckingham Palace. Instead, Mr Samaddar's souvenir picture is of him standing inside a white office cubicle with a friend.

His photo from the Cook Islands reveals nothing of the country's white-sand beaches or lush vegetation, but shows him sat with friends at a patio table.

And, in a more bizarre turn, his Greenland shot shows him standing on front of a cabin with a baby's pram to one side and a local cheerily raising a can of drink to the camera on the other.



London calling: There's more to the capital than the inside of an office cubicle

The idea for the trip began in 2003 when Calcutta-born Mr Samaddar was left stranded in Johannesburg, South Africa for two days because of visa problems due to his nationality.



As an act of defiance, the businessman promised himself he would travel to all the countries in the world, using his life savings to do so.

Luckily he had an understanding wife, Barnali, who even accompanied him to more than 70 of the countries he visited.

The globe trotting adventurer was determined to complete the whole trip using his Indian passport - despite opportunities to adopt Australian and Canadian citizenship - as he wanted to prove an Indian could travel the world.

He also wanted to highlight the difficulties some nationalities encounter obtaining visas to enter countries - a problem he is very familiar with.

'The most difficult visa to get was Moldova, which took me almost three years with many rejections,' he said.

'The problem isn’t with big countries like America, England or places in Europe, a lot of the time it’s smaller countries who don’t know what they should be doing.'



According to Guinness World Records, any person attempting the trip must take public transport such as scheduled flights, buses, trains and ferries to arrive in countries.

The record-breaking authority also defines visiting a country as 'setting foot within its border'.



It is not necessary to remain in any country for any length of time - perhaps this could go some way to explain Mr Samaddar's opportunistic photos.

As a result of his trip, the Indian national has set up the Travel, Tourism and Peace Initiative, which provides travellers with advice on what documentation they need to enter different countries.