(CNN) — Following decades of traveling, equally individually and alongside one another, Rachel Davey and Martina Sebova had every frequented over 100 of the 195 UN-acknowledged nations and territories on the globe.
The pair, who achieved throughout an overland tour of Europe again in 2008, ended up possessing coffee with each other in Melbourne, Australia, when they first reviewed the prospect of viewing the 88 or so remaining international locations on their lists.
They rapidly decided to invest the future two years undertaking just that together.
While the assumed of traveling to so several new destinations in a fairly quick house of time was to some degree overwhelming, Sebova notes that owning over fifty percent of the international locations in the world currently ticked off designed items a lot easier.
“I imagine it would terrify me if I experienced to start checking out just about every state and I would been to like 10,” the journey blogger tells CNN Travel. “I will not truly imagine that which is even practical. You have to have to be perfectly traveled [before doing something like this].”
The excited pair then started arranging for their large excursion, saving as significantly cash as they could in buy to fund the journey, with the intention of paying all-around 5 to seven times in every single place.
Vacation quest
Rachel Davey and Martina Sebova, pictured in Baalbek, Lebanon, bonded by their passion for travel.
Rachel Davey/Quite Hungry Nomads
Right before environment off in 2018, Davey and Sebova, who had been jointly for all-around a ten years by this stage, made the decision that they would not reveal that they have been a few, and only journey as buddies.
“It was really all-natural,” says Sebova, explaining that they ended up implementing for visas in some conservative international locations didn’t want to risk staying denied entry.
“We have been visiting a good deal of countries wherever even the strategy of a very same-sex couple will not exist,” she provides. “And we failed to seriously want to set our individual safety at danger at any stage.”
Davey and Sebova say that acting as though they ended up just greatest mates “wasn’t genuinely considerably of a transform” and men and women often assumed that they have been sisters.
“It was hardly ever a significant challenge,” adds Davey. “We never experimented with to go over it. We just did not [tell anyone].”
The initial new state they frequented was North Korea and the pair went on to vacation to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan and Pakistan.
In 2019, they spent 6 months touring across Central Africa and say that the grueling bus journeys took a toll on them soon after a although.
“We did like 38 hours on buses, at times just shifting autos, attempting to get from A to B,” points out Sebova.
Nomadic way of life
All through a pay a visit to to the town of Lalibela in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia.
Rachel Davey/Quite Hungry Nomads
The pair say that some of their ideal ordeals were in locations that they had been a lot more cautious of prior to browsing.
“The men and women in Sudan and Iran had been some of the friendliest persons that we have encountered,” provides Sebova. “And most people today would assume individuals nations are seriously unsafe dependent on the graphic [we see].”
Eritrea, a little country based in East Africa, and the Caribbean island of Dominica had been between the other stand out countries they visited.
According to Sebova, the actuality that they were being women in their late 30s who ended up not married with little ones proved to be relatively controversial in some of the nations they visited.
“There are cultural discrepancies with just staying a girl and traveling without the need of a male,” she describes. “We ended up denied a couple of visas just primarily based on that.”
Though several of their buddies experienced picked out to place their price savings into home loans and/or organizations about the a long time, Davey and Sebova, who describe themselves as nomads, say they are “joyful to spend it on vacation and get worried about that later.”
Davey holds an Australian passport, even though Sebova has a Slovakian passport, which once in a while induced troubles when it arrived to implementing for visas.
“From time to time it was like, ‘you can get 1 right here, [but I can’t] which threw a spanner in there,” explains Davey. “But it worked out.”
After years of touring collectively, the pair are properly knowledgeable of their strengths and weaknesses, and every get duty for diverse duties during the vacation.
They reveal that Sebova is a lot more normally organized and focuses on producing certain their day operates as smoothly as probable, even though Davey is “additional flippant,” and less experienced when it arrives to navigation.
“Rach will get lost in the lodge,” jokes Sebova, who also will work as a tour guide. “I generally say it can be a wonder that she created it via every single nation. We make a good team.”
Pandemic delay
They traveled about Australia in a campervan even though the country’s borders were closed to global vacation.
Rachel Davey/Incredibly Hungry Nomads
They experienced been on the street for all-around two several years, and have been just 10 nations away from reaching their aim when the pandemic hit.
The pair, who were being in London at the time, selected to fly to Australia, and ended up inevitably compelled to set the remainder of the trip on hold due to the border limits in put at the time.
Nevertheless, they ongoing to journey, opting to acquire a camper van and generate around the nation with each other “with the borders of Australia closing powering us.”
“We finished up accomplishing the major lap of Australia in 18 months and used a lot of time in Queensland and Western Australia, which was remarkable, simply because we could not go away the state,” suggests Davey. “We lived in our camper van and it was heaps of exciting.”
When travel constraints have been lifted for Australians in 2022, they were forced to hold out until eventually the borders reopened in the remaining spots on the listing, which incorporated some of the Pacific Islands.
This proved to be particularly annoying, specifically as quite a few of their peers were touring extensively now that the environment had reopened, while they ended up patiently waiting around for a several nations around the world to raise constraints.
“We started out this journey contemplating that we would end this enormous quest in our 30s,” points out Sebova.
“Then we tipped into our 40s throughout the pandemic and we had been sitting in a van, not possessing anything at all, nonetheless waiting.”
They ended up able to journey to the North African state of Libya where by border limits had also lifted, but experienced to wait around significantly lengthier for their final locations, Kiribati and Samoa, each positioned in the Pacific Islands, to reopen.
Kiribati ultimately lifted restrictions for global travelers in August 2022, and the pair flew in a several weeks later on.
Problem finished
They achieved Samoa, the closing state on their list, on November 19, 2022 and say it took a whilst for it to sink in that they’d at last achieved their purpose.
“It [Samoa] was just the excellent location to finish,” states Sebova. “I experienced this second when I was standing in entrance of a map of the environment and imagining oh my god, we have been to each and every state on this map.”
The pair celebrated the large milestone with a close friend, who’d flown out to the little island state, located halfway involving Hawaii and New Zealand, to satisfy them.
When they returned to Australia in late 2022 possessing visited each state in the planet, they began receiving increased media fascination and men and women setting up to request concerns about their marriage.
“They seemed at our feed and in a natural way noticed a couple, anything that other folks just do not see,” adds Sebova, outlining that they ended up satisfied to ensure that they had been in a partnership after they’d achieved their goal.
They began their comprehensive journey with a go to to North Korea back in spring 2018.
Rachel Davey/Really Hungry Nomads
“We had followers on social media who ended up like, ‘oh my god, I always imagined that you were a few, but you hardly ever reported anything at all.'”
Davey and Sebova tension that, apart from the situation of safety, they wished to continue to keep the discussion about their excursion focused on the reality that they were being two gals having on this kind of a substantial obstacle, noting that they when they in the beginning appeared into the handful of hundred tourists who’d been to each and every region in the world, the record was rather male-dominated.
“You see so handful of women of all ages in this aspect of journey, which is additional adventurous,” adds Sebova. “So we ended up attempting to modify that, as very well as encourage other gals by demonstrating that it [the world] is not such a scary spot.”
Now that they’ve lastly accomplished their aim, Davey and Sebova say they have no programs to settle down and will go on to are living a nomadic lifestyle for as long as doable.
They’re at the moment setting up a trip to Thailand and hope to check out Indonesia later in the calendar year.
“We have generally lived in the minute,” says Davey. “That [being on the move] makes us both happy now. So which is what we will do. I never approach too considerably in advance. We hardly ever have.”
