Photo via World Records Academy
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.
Samaddar's mission was inspired by trouble he had in South Africa in 2002 over his Indian passport. Samaddar then vowed to visit every country in the world to show it could be done.
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.'
To abide by Guinness Book rules, he traveled using only public transportation. The rules state you only have to set foot in a country to count it, which may explain Samaddar less-than-impressive tourist photographs.
The photo above is of Kashi's last place visited:
Links: Article at Daily Mail | More at World Records Academy.
From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by digimouse.
So quit harping on his pictures and recognize his great accomplishment.
1.3 years in and 1/4 "done". (I'm photoing and experiencing the countries instead of just stepping on country soil.)
www.andrewmazzotta.com
*No country counts unless 3 cultural things are seen on a minimum of 3 days. Also would love tips, advice, stories, and places to go in the hard to reach countries you have knowledge of.