(CNN) — Very few people attempt to walk around the entire world, and even fewer actually manage to complete the journey.
On May 21, 2022 Tom Turcich, from New Jersey, became the 10th person on record to achieve this remarkable feat, while his four-legged companion Savannah was the first dog to do so.
The pair were greeted with a huge homecoming celebration attended by many of Turcich’s friends and family, along with well wishers.
The triumphant moment brought about the end of a seven-year, 48,000-kilometer (29,826-mile) journey that he’d spent even longer working toward.
“It was very surreal,” Turcich tells CNN Travel from his parent’s home in Haddon Township. “I had imagined what the ending would be like for a long time. And when it happened, there were people lining the streets and walking with me.
“The primary emotion was just relief. This had dominated my life for 15 years, and to finally be able to kind of put it behind me was amazing.”
Inspirational walk
Tom Turcich, from New Jersey, and his dog Savannah spent seven years walking around the world together.
Tom Turcich
The inspiration for the trip stemmed from a sad loss in 2006, when his long-time friend Ann Marie died in a jet ski accident at the age of 17.
“It [her death] was very formative for me,” he explains. “She was a much better person than me. And it sunk in that I was going to die [one day] and it could happen at any moment. And I started re-evaluating everything.”
Turcich, who has been compared to Forrest Gump, the character Tom Hanks played in the 1994 movie, decided he needed travel and adventure in his life and began looking into all the different ways he could
After reading about Steven Newman, listed by Guinness World Records as the first person to walk around the world, and walking adventurer Karl Bushby, who has been circumnavigating the globe on foot since 1998, Turcich became set on taking on this challenge himself.
“It [walking] seemed like the best way to understand the world and be forced into new places,” he says. “I didn’t just want to go to Paris and Machu Picchu, I really wanted to understand the world and see how people were living day to day.”
Once he’d committed to the task, Turcich started planning out the route, while also trying to raise funding for his travels.
He managed…
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