Adventurer Graham Hughes was jailed in Africa (twice). He has scaled Pyramids in Giza, swam with jellyfish in Palau, won a Caribbean island called Jinja on a gameshow, and braved the high seas (and high-risk of Somali Pirates) to drink Takamaka rum in the Seychelles.

But still Hughes—who was awarded a Guiness World Record for traveling to all 215 countries and territories recognized by the UN without boarding a plane—says one of his favorite stories to tell is about breakfast:

“I was on an overnight bus in Iran, from Shiraz to Khorramshahr. I was sitting behind this elderly woman and she was speaking on her phone in Farsi. She turned around and passed me her phone. It was her grandson, who spoke perfect English and he said ‘You’re sitting behind my grandmother and she’s asked me to tell you she’s worried about you. The bus gets in very early and she’s concerned that you won’t have anyone to make you breakfast, so she’s asking if you will go to her home and she will feed you’. Did I go? Of course. She laid out a thick tablecloth on the floor, we sat on cushions. Breakfast consisted of flatbread, eggs, jam, and spices.”

To promote a new show on the Travel Channel about his 4-year trip around the globe, Hughes answered questions this week on Reddit, sharing anecdotes from adventures and the insights he gained along the way.

Traveling alone on a budget of just $150 a week he says he “ran the US blockade to get into Cuba, joined a Bwiti tribe in Gabon,was helped by Maoist rebels in Nepal, [and] danced with the Highlanders of Papua New Guinea” but has never gotten mugged.

“I think I almost got mugged in Durban, South Africa,” he responded when asked about what dangerous situations he found himself in. “But an ambulance driver stopped and told me to get into the ambulance. He told me I was being followed by a known criminal. I hopped in the ambulance!”

He added that he never felt that his safety was at stake, even visiting areas plagued by terrorist attacks and warlords in parts of Africa and the Middle East:

“In Afghanistan, I spent a day in Herat in the very north-west, again I never felt threatened (I was welcomed into the country by a remarkably friendly border guard). Papua New Guinea is a dangerous place though. I was there for a few weeks and there was a massacre, a plane crash, a riot, an earthquake and a tsunami warning… still, it wouldn’t stop me going back, I had a really great time there!”

Still, he had a couple close calls with police in Africa. In Cape Verde, after being falsely accused of smuggling people into the country he spent five nights sleeping on the floor of a concrete 8-foot by 8-foot cell, which he had to share with 10 others.

He was also endured harrowing conditions after arguing with police officers in the Congo:

“I was put in a big cell, and had a bit of foam to sleep on this time, but it was seriously grim—smears of blood all over the walls,” he writes. “They took my shoes and socks, my T-shirt and my glasses. I didn’t eat for six days because I didn’t want to have to take a shit. The toilet was a squatter that had not been cleaned since 1972.”

Hughes says he opted against air travel for three reasons: “carbon footprint, it’s cheaper not to fly, nobody had visited every country without flying before.” It made it difficult to enter some countries, especially when countries had issues with other stamps on his passport.

“You’ll get hassle of US Homeland Security if you have a Cuba stamp, apparently Algeria has a problem with Malawi stamps (weird, I know!),” he said, explaining that he often relied on two separate passports to get past the issue. It worked in most places, but Israel made things difficult:

“How to go to Israel without getting stamped in or out: go from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge crossing. The Jordanian authorities won’t stamp you out and if you’re quick (and polite) the Israeli authorities will stamp a piece of paper instead—leave via the same route. Also be sure not to have any Israeli Shekels on you when you cross into a “no Israeli stamps” country, or have any Israeli hotels, restaurants or bars circled in your guidebook.”

Several redditors also had questions about best and worst cuisine, which Hughes was happy to hash out. India, Ethiopia, Mexico, Italy, Thailand, and China all made the best list but he says his favorite food is made in France. He added that his most memorable meal, however, was squid caught in West Papua and cooked in sweet and sour sauce: “It melted in my mouth.”

The trip was made most memorable, though by the people he encountered. Hughes said his global adventures—and the friends he met along the way—have had a big impact on his outlook.

“Doing this really helped me have a positive attitude towards this wonderful little planet of ours,” he writes. When Redditors asked him he has changed as a person he responded emphasizing that the biggest lesson he has learned is that most people are good—and things are never as bad as they seem.

“It made me a lot more positive about the planet, humanity, and our shared future. If all we know of the world comes from news reports of massacres and atrocities it’s easy to think that the world is going to hell in a hard cart, but the truth is that the media by its very nature tends to over-report the bad and under-report the good. Going to these places made the world seem a lot more real, a lot more connected and made the challenges that we face seem less insurmountable.”