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Around the World in 254 Days: A Global Adventure Before the Smartphone
Paperback
Adventurers & ExplorersHistorical FiguresTravel Writing
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 7 2026
Pages: 74
Weight: 0.24
Height: 0.15 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
No GPS. No internet cafes in the desert. No safety nets. Just 20 countries, 254 days, and a completely different world.
In the fragile global landscape of 2002, John Burkin set out from New York City with a backpack, a basic digital camera, and a meticulous itinerary. What followed was a monumental around-the-world odyssey captured in real-time through the energetic, raw emails he sent back home to friends and family.
From navigating a strict airport curfew driven by upset rice in Japan, to sleeping beneath a five-million-star desert sky in the Australian Outback, Around the World in 254 Days is a vivid time capsule of shoestring travel at the dawn of the digital age. Follow along as John survives a harrowing, door-flying minibus ride through the Gobi Desert, experiences a deep, life-changing spiritual connection with a stranger in a Tibetan cathedral, and finds himself welcomed like a pop star by the fiercely hospitable people of Myanmar.
Hilarious, gritty, and deeply observant, this memoir is more than a travelogue-it is an intimate look at a rare era of human connection. It is a story about the beauty of getting lost, the friction of independent travel, and the profound statistics of retrospective gratitude.
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