We like to think we’ve got about a bit (in a geographical, well-travelled sense, you understand). Travelling Australia may be our passion but we’ve done more than our fair share of globetrotting elsewhere too. Then we met Andre Brugiroux at the Adventure Travel Show. Compared to him, our travels are the equivalent of a quick trip to the local park.
Andre has been everywhere. Well, almost. Now 78, he has visited virtually every country and territory in the world. Between 1967 and 1973 he hitch-hiked 340,000 km around the world in a single adventure, and never once succumbed to the temptation of a decent hotel.
Today, he has one adventure left to take: the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Ahead of his very last journey of discovery, we spoke to Andre about his travel experiences and his attitude to technology. Does a man who’s been travelling since 1967 find his world changed by tech?
“Technology to me is neutral,” says Andre, “but man is not. So all depends the way you use it. When I left France in 1955, we had no phone nor TV in the houses. No Lonely Planet guides. No jet planes. Internet and Google were not even imagined. I must admit that today technology is a useful tool for planning and also during travelling. But I don’t think that smartphones, Skype and laptops are necessary for travelling. You need to breathe sometime.”
What, then, are Andre’s latest concessions to modern travel tech?
“I just got a simple mobile phone and a visa card three months ago!” he admits. “I am not taking them with me when travelling, though.”
Andre’s most useful piece of travel equipment is decidedly low-tech. “A shoe lace to tie my pack-sack to my wrist during nights outside in order to find it by me next morning. I travel with the lightest pack possible. I hate weight on my back. I only take the very minimum I need. Carrying useless things around, is that a sign of maturity?”
We mumble something, look at our feet nervously and make a mental note to take that primus stove-cum-Bluetooth speaker out of our pack. We’re excited by things like virtual reality. We suspect Andre isn’t.
“I prefer real reality to virtual reality,” he says. And the one piece of travel technology he does wish for? “The machine to give some common sense to man.”
He may never be convinced by the value of travel tech, but his passion for travel remains undimmed. His first adventure was “crossing the Swiss border as a kid during the war, for food.” It ignited a life off the beaten track.
“I badly wanted to know the world since I existed. This desire was with me and within me. I just had to exorcise it. No family influence. When I want a thing I just do it. Result: I have spent all my life on the go.”
Andre tells us his best experience was “Discovering the Baha’i administrative plan which answers the need of the world today.” But with 195 of the world’s 196 countries ticked off, we wonder what was the worst. “Trying English cooking!” he laughs. We’re not sure that he’s joking.
We ask Andre for his best piece of travel wisdom (aside from not eating in England).
“When you cannot sleep, just keep totally calm. The hours you lie without sleeping just give you the same rest as if you were sleeping.”
Andre’s book, One People One Planet, is out now.
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