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- Frenchman Jeremy Marie has spent five years travelling to 71 countries
- He did not spend a single penny on travel costs
- Journeyed in cars, boats, planes and even a donkey since he set off in 2007
He may not have made it 'around the world in 80 days', but when you are thumbing a lift the whole way, what would you expect?
Frenchman Jeremy Marie has spent five years travelling over 100,000 miles around the world, relying all the way on the kindness of strangers for a free ride.
From trekking in 50C heat through the deserts of Sudan to braving temperatures of -20C while catching a lift in Kazakhstan, Mr Marie has visited over 71 countries.
The 29-year-old globetrotter has hitched lifts with cars, boats, planes and even a donkey since he set off from Caen, Normandy in October 2007.
Remarkably despite his 180,000km trip, Jeremy has not paid a penny towards his transport and instead relied on the generosity of strangers to give him a free ride.
During his trip he hitchiked and sofa surfed his way across Europe, USA, South America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and plenty more in between.
He said: 'My passion for travelling came when I stayed with a Polish family as part of a school foreign exchange trip.
'This desire to travel led me to live a year abroad, when I went to live in Wales.During this year I also had the opportunity to visit England and Ireland. It was in the green and very hilly city of Dublin I had my first taste of hitchhiking.
'I like to hitchhike, it's a good way to meet people and you get to see the world from a local's point of view and see and experience things a tourist wouldn't usually be able to.
'When I came back from Wales. I started a tour of Europe with a friend. we hitchiked our way through Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, England and France.
'The next logical step was to travel the world so I set myself the goal of touring the world by hitch-hiking.
'Hitchhiking makes it possible to meet local people, it makes it easier to make friends on your travels.
'Another benefit of hitch-hiking is by being a pedestrian you have greater freedom, all I had was a bag and I had the freedom to go wherever I liked, whenever I liked.
'Hitchhiking is not just a means of travel, it is an unexplainable passion, I go and find a good spot on the roadside and raise my thumb. I then wait anxiously to see if the car indicates, if the driver lowers their window.
'If they do, they take my bag, I get in and talk to the driver and/or passengers, people I would never normally have had the chance to meet.
'It was a long experience and took over five years but it gave me the opportunity to see places that are sometimes difficult to get to.
'I've visited 71 countries in total from Italy, and Asia to the USA and Canada.
'Some countries are very easy to hitchhike around, New Zealand was great the people are very friendly, the roads are good and there was no danger of miscommunication.
'But it was difficult in the US as it's against the law to hitchhike there, so people were very reluctant to stop and offer me a lift.'
'It was quality time, time to think about the meaning of life,"Marie says of his boat trips.
Mr Marie said the best part of his trip was managing to hitch a lift aboard a 45-foot sailboat in Cartagena, where the British captain took him on as a crewmate.
The four month journey took Jeremy across the Pacific Ocean where he visited Tonga the Galapagos islands, Panama, Auckland and New Zealand.
Mr Marie said: 'This was definitely my favourite part of my trip. It was quality time, time to think about the meaning of life, without worrying where the next lift would come from.'
'Hitchhiking has given me the opportunity to see so much of the world, it is the best way to travel.
'Sometimes I felt scared, there's good and bad people everywhere and so you have to be careful about who you choose to trust when you're hitchhiking.
'I met my girlfriend in Bali, Indonesia while I was travelling and hitched a lift with a pilot to come back here.
'I'm now living here writing a book about my journey.'
Way
The stories he must have to tell!
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