Michigan man aims to break Guinness record for fastest world travel

NORTHVILLE, Michigan. – Michael Zervos intends to travel the globe on a record happiness trip.

After a year of planning, Zervos, 35, has recently broken a Guinness World Record by traveling to every country in the world, one after the other, faster than anyone who has done it before. The current record is held by Alabama’s Taylor Demonbreun, who in 2018 achieved the feat in 554 days.

Since his departure on January. 17, Zervos has been in Russia and Turkey. He is currently traveling through Africa, one country at a time.

Purpose Project Cosmosas Zervos calls the epic adventure, it’s more than a globetrotter trip focused on how fast you can get in and out of the 193 UN countries, plus two “observer states,” that Guinness says a person must visit to a shot at the record.

Along the way, he also plans to film fragments of happiness and share these stories with the world. his Instagram page.

“I realized that I didn’t want to just travel and break this record if that was the only thing I was getting out of it, just the emotions,” he said. “I wanted to get something that I could share with other people. I wanted to create art out of it.”

So he thought, “What is something that I could ask people? What is something of value that I could learn from this that will last the record?”

The records, he knew from the start, were meant to be broken.

After auditioning a number of questions with friends and strangers, Zervos finally decided on the one question he will ask people around the globe: What is the happiest moment of your life?

A long state of creative depression

For Zervos, a 2006 graduate of Northville High School in Michigan, the inspiration for his trip around the world came gradually.

After college — his mother says he was practically born with a camera in hand — he started a film company and lived in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas.

Things went well in the early years, but over time he found himself falling into what he called a “long state of creative depression, or just plain depression.”

“Maybe five or six years ago, I traded my creativity, my passion, for a paycheck,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of cut-and-dried Fortune 500 salespeople, where you can close your eyes and just imagine what the executives are going to say before you even walk in. And when you’re on set, you’ll probably do some of these commercials sleepwalkers

“It’s a good life. You can retire on it, but it wasn’t complete.”

Then the pandemic hit, and things got worse. The film industry shut down, no one wanted to talk about new projects, and Zervos found himself at his lowest point.

It was at this time that he read about Anderson Dias, a Brazilian who visited every country in the world and declared that he had beaten the time of Demonbreunalthough it has not been recognized by Guinness.

“I thought, ‘Man, that’s such a cool thing.’ You go to countries that you have no reason to go to, and you challenge yourself beyond anything you ever dreamed you could do,” Zervos said.

Zervos, who had previously traveled to 55 countries, jumped out of planes, eaten bugs in the Amazon during a “survival week,” and gone on many other adventures, was ready for more.

“I like the learning aspect that travel provides, and I also like the culture shock,” he said, noting that to qualify for the record, he will need to visit those 55 countries again. “I like to challenge my vision of the world looking at it from the outside, and this is what gives me travel.”

The question of happiness

After struggling with his own depression, Zervos knew he wanted to talk to others around the world about the joy they found in everyday life.

“I know a lot of Gen Z and millennials are experiencing the same thing,” he said. “They have the world, but they don’t have their happiness.”

Questions Zervos tested on friends and strangers included, for example, “What makes you happy?” or “What is happiness?”

Those, he found, evoked general responses like family, money or success.

“So I found that middle ground of ‘What’s the happiest moment of your life?'” he said. “That makes someone their own storyteller. I have now asked a hundred people this only in the United States, and I understand that people are quite animated when they pull out of themselves a story that evokes such a powerful feeling as happiness.”

And so what started as a thought experiment became the foundation of a plan to break a record and create art. Project Kosmos was born.

The hardest countries first

From his experience flying around the globe to film, Zervos knew he would have the most energy at the start of his journey.

“I wanted to start with the hardest countries first, the ones that have to be the most rigorous when it comes to travel,” he said. “Africa is by far the hardest to cross. The infrastructure is really tough, flights are scattered. Traveling across borders by land can be unsafe, so you have to know when and where. Then there’s the disease , malaria and meningitis”.

To help facilitate security and fund the trip, Zervos lined up a number of sponsors, including Moosejaw, an outdoor retailer from Michigan that provided the backpack and gear he’ll carry throughout the trip, along with some financial support.

Other sponsors include iVisa, which helped secure 69 visas, and Untamed Borders, a company that will see him in some of the “most inaccessible countries” on his itinerary.

“They take me to countries like Turkmenistan or Eritrea or Guinea-Bissau or Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said.

The US State Department currently has travel advisories Americans warn of the dangers related to political instability, crime, terrorism and other threats in those and many other countries.

After visiting the 54 countries of Africa, he plans to go to the Middle East, then through parts of Asia and the Pacific Islands before returning to New Zealand. From there, it will go to Australia and then back to southern and central Asia before going to Europe.

“That’s the halfway point,” Zervos said, noting that he plans to wrap up the European leg of the tour in Portugal, then head to Brazil and South America, the Caribbean and Canada before finally returning to the States united

In each country, expect to stay one to five days and have made some – but not all – arrangements in advance.

“I’m going camping in Yurts in Turkmenistan outside this massive flaming pit called the Gate of Hell,” he said. “I lived with the Dinka in South Sudan.”

A scientist in Angola, he said, invited him to visit a geological site.

Although he will only be staying a short time in each place, Zervos is not worried about missing out on the whole experience of a country.

“This is about people and collecting their stories,” he said. “I will never know a country if I spend a month or two here. Some of these countries are so complicated, they have a hundred different languages. It is not the purpose of my trip, but I hope it will give me an idea of the places I want to revisit later.”

Back home

For Christmas, Michael Zervos’ parents, Maria and Angelo Zervos, gave him a large world map that currently hangs in the library of their Novi home. Every time he visits a new country, they put a gold pin on the map.

Maria Zervos knows that the oldest of her four adult children – she calls him an old soul – has prepared well, as always.

Their itinerary, visas, sponsorships, currency, packaging, vaccinations, travel insurance and more were all lined up and triple checked before they left. However, it was an emotional few months that culminated when they dropped him off at the airport in January. 17.

“It was a really hard day, but I tried to be strong for him,” Maria said through tears, noting that it was difficult to even look at her son for fear that she would break down. But she had given Michael her blessing, as he had asked. “I told him to come home safe and sound, and I told him I knew he was going to break the record.”

Once back home, Zervos hopes his journey will resonate through stories of happiness around the world.

“I’m going to break the record, but then someone else will break it,” he said. “That won’t matter so much later because I hope my contribution to helping other people will be significant.

Michigan man aims to break Guinness record for fastest world travel

Related

33 thoughts on “Michigan man aims to break Guinness record for fastest world travel”

Leave a Comment Cancel reply